James.galbraith

Quds chief was killed in an American airstrike in Baghdad.

On Friday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was out to cheerlead in the wake of U.S. airstrikes that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. The action, said Pompeo, was in response to “imminent threats to American lives”; however, Pompeo would not describe those threats and, as of 1:30 ET, has still not explained those threats to Congress. 

What Pompeo would say is, “The world is a much safer place today. I can assure you that Americans in the region are much safer.” Which is why the State Department has just released a security alert saying, “Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region,” American citizens are urged to “depart Iraq immediately.” As an even greater example of safety, the instructions are to “depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land.“ Depart via airline while possible? 

Actually, it may have already been impossible by the time the bulletin was issued. Royal Jordanian Airlines announced early on Friday that it had stopped all service between Amman and Baghdad “in light of the security situation.” And Bahrain’s Gulf Air has also suspended all service to Baghdad “until further notice due to safety.” Taken together, that would be half of the regular daily flights into Baghdad International Airport. At the time of this writing, Qatar Airways and British Airways still have scheduled departures for Friday evening. For those not lucky enough to snag one of the remaining flights, the opportunity to escape “to other countries via land” means a several-hundred-mile journey to Jordan or Saudi Arabia, or about an 80-mile jaunt from Baghdad to Iran. 

For Americans who were thinking they might seek shelter at the embassy, think again. The State Department instructs that “U.S. citizens should not approach the Embassy.” Because that’s how much safer things are after Soleimani’s death.

Pompeo also said that the assassination of Soleimani was an attempt to “de-escalate the situation.” So maybe it will all look better if it’s given a little time. A little patience.

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BREAKING — “We tell everyone be patient to see the dead bodies of Americans all over the Middle East,” says the new commander of the Iranian Quds Force Ismail Qaani

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) January 3, 2020

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President Donald Trump with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on October 23, 2019. | Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Don’t trust liars — especially about matters of war and peace.

Every international crisis generates more than its fair share of insta-experts, charlatans, and Wikipedia-summarizers, so it’s probably best for political pundits to try to stick to subjects we’re genuinely knowledgeable about.

For example: President Donald Trump is a deeply dishonest person.

Since long before he was a politician, he’s lied frequently and even written in multiple books about his profound belief in the value of lying as a means to get ahead. And he’s good at it. After his Atlantic City casinos went bust, he successfully duped a bunch of mom-and-pop equity investors out of their money to get out of debt and had them pay him a salary for the privilege. He then got himself elected president and immediately started bullshitting about everything from the size of his inaugural crowds to the way NATO works to Chinese currency manipulation.

When someone has proven over and over again that they are not trustworthy, you can, and in important situations should, stop trusting them.

Unfortunately, in the escalating crisis with Iran, many people seem to have forgotten this basic principle.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on CNN earlier this morning to explain that the Trump administration killed a top Iranian general to forestall an “imminent threat” and that the decision to do so “saved American lives.” Those remarks are simply echoed uncritically in the Washington Post’s main write-up of the story, along with the observation that Pompeo “stressed that Washington is committed to de-escalation” — a fairly dubious assertion given the current cycle of escalating hostilities dates to Trump’s unprovoked decision to pull out of the Iranian nuclear deal. An ABC News write-up of the story stresses the risks of Iranian retaliation, but simply takes Pompeo’s claim of an imminent threat at face value.

It’s obviously possible, in theory, that this is true. But it’s somewhat at odds with the Department of Defense’s statement last night which said merely that Suleimani was “actively developing plans” for attacks and that the American bombing was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans” rather than disrupting an ongoing one. And indeed, David Sanger’s News Analysis piece in the New York Times takes the Pentagon’s deterrence account at face value without noting that the secretary of state actually claims the attack was about something else.

Beyond the contradictions, the basic fact is that telling the truth about something would be a kind of strange, new departure for the Trump administration and it seems unwise to assume that’s something they would do.

Trump lies all the time about everything

All politicians garner fact-checks, but Trump is so dishonest that CNN’s Daniel Dale has a beat composed exclusively of keeping track of all the nonsense the president spouts, routinely generating headlines like “Trump made 96 false claims over the last two weeks” and “Trump makes at least 18 false claims in ranting Fox & Friends interview.”

The sheer range of things Trump lies about — including recently claiming that the Prime Minister of Canada edited the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation version of Home Alone 2 to remove a Trump cameo — is mind-boggling and goes way beyond any kind of normal political process.

Part of Trump lying about everything is that he frequently says things specifically about Iran that are not true. Back in July, for example, Trump tweeted about the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal that misstated the amount of money involved, misstated the duration of the deal, and fabricated secret Iranian violations of the agreement. It was not particularly clear at the time why Trump was lying about this stuff. But the general point is that he lies so routinely about everything that people scarcely bother to inquire about what might be driving those specific lies.

Trump, from time to time, even lies about his own past statements on Iran, spending one day last September complaining that the media reported he’d said he was willing to meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions when he clearly said in both an interview with Chuck Todd and a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte that he was willing to meet without preconditions.

The point is that the probative value of a Trump statement about Iran is, to be generous, roughly zero. And Pompeo is no better.

Mike Pompeo lies a lot (albeit not as much as Trump)

In the early Trump years, false things Pompeo said would often be contradicted by members of his team who valued their standing in polite society over loyalty to Trump.

Over time, people like former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats who were in the habit of doing that have been pushed out in favor of people like Pompeo. As the former CIA director, Pompeo distorted intelligence about Russia to fit Trump’s preferred narratives. Then, as secretary of state, he misled the public about his role in the Ukrainian aid holdup that led to Trump’s impeachment.

Pompeo, too, engages in routine misstatements about Iran specifically, including lies about Iranian nuclear research.

This is important both because Pompeo has become the public face of the administration on this issue, and because though Pompeo does not engage in the range of dishonest statements that Trump does, his more focused dishonesty does include the policy topic at hand.

Fibbers’ forecasts are worthless

I vividly recall spending much of the winter of 2002-2003 arguing with other college students about the then-looming US invasion of Iraq.

In the strongly anti-Bush climate on campus, one popular view was that the administration was simply lying about the strength of its intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs. I felt this was naive; the Bush team not only had direct access to the intelligence, but they were the ones pushing for an invasion that would, if it happened, end up exposing exactly what the state of those programs was. It was preposterous to believe, as my anti-war friends did, that Bush’s team was deliberately engineering a series of events that would simply lead to them being utterly discredited.

This was, needless to say, flawed logic on my part that was really driven home last night as Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer appeared on Sean Hannity’s program to advocate for hawkish policy toward Iran.

It’s scary to contemplate the possibility that the president would approach matters of war and peace with roughly the level of honesty and forethought that he brings to vital issues like Canadian edits of Home Alone 2.

Consequently, I understand the psychological impulse to set aside years worth of Trump fact-checking and put men with suits on television to explain what’s happening with their secret intelligence. But this is a poor forecasting principle. Back in May of 2018 there was a sudden outburst of enthusiasm about Trump’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, complete with media scolding of churlish liberals who refused to give credit where due for a breakthrough. I was skeptical, based on the general principle that you shouldn’t trust liars, and I was right. Now the latest is that Trump’s Korean diplomacy has completely collapsed, but it’s being overshadowed by Iran news.

The sad fact of the matter is that the world is a scary place. Powerful people lie, including about important matters. They sometimes don’t get caught and even when they do, they don’t always suffer for it. I hope there was some kind of good reason to bomb that Baghdad airport and some kind of plan to deal with the aftermath. But all we really know about it is that the people in charge of explaining to us what happened and why aren’t worthy of our trust.

The reasons that Donald Trump would need a massive distraction at this point are numerous. Every day seems to produce fresh evidence that the White House was fully aware that Trump’s delay of military assistance to Ukraine was simply against the law, and that multiple officials engaged in a criminal conspiracy to cover up for Trump and retroactively create an excuse for an inexcusable act. Somewhere right now, Mitch McConnell is probably drafting a statement claiming that the Senate could not possibly consider an impeachment trial “during a time of war.”

But onto that stack of dog-wagging rationales add this one: According to Forensic News, Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank were underwritten by a Russian state-owned bank. That news reportedly comes from a whistleblower with access to documents from both Deutsche Bank and Russia’s state-owned VTB Bank. VTB Bank was also the proposed lender on the never-completed Trump Tower Moscow project.

The question of why Deutsche Bank would extend a series of huge loans to Trump has been dangling since before he ever announced his candidacy for president on a golden escalator ride. When Trump first went to Deutsche Bank, he was worse than broke. He had just finished bankrupting multiple casinos in New Jersey, and then had convinced investors to back a takeover of those casinos at a fraction of the original value. Then Trump deliberately allowed the investment group to go bankrupt so he could grab the whole deal himself at a fraction of what his investors had paid. Then he went bankrupt. Again. And along the way he was socked with a massive fine for money laundering at his now bankrupt (again) casino.

Trump was so fiscally radioactive that no American bank would let him in the door. But Deutsche Bank turned around and gifted Trump with loans that gave him a fresh start and an apparently miracle turnaround of his New York real estate empire. Those loans have always been the subject of head-scratching over just what Deutsche Bank could have been thinking. But if Forensic News is right, what Deutsche Bank was thinking was that it wasn’t risking a damn thing, because the Russian government was actually vouching for Trump through VTB Bank. If Trump didn’t come through, Vladimir Putin was offering to make it good.

The documents supposedly originated with the son of a former Deutsche Bank official who committed suicide, which is very much the kind of connection that raises concerns about the authenticity of the information. This only highlights the importance of efforts by Congress to gain access to information on these loans. The last appeals court ruling in the case instructed Deutsche Bank to turn over the information, but the Supreme Court stepped in to block the subpoena and hear the case.

Trump lost the fight against the congressional subpoena at the district level and in two appeals, with all judges decisively siding with Congress’ authority to request the records. That the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case is very unusual, both because there was no conflict among rulings by lower courts and because the Supreme Court tends to avoid most cases involving a conflict between the executive and legislative branches.

Much of Trump’s “recovery” depended on selling apartments and buildings to Russian oligarchs at far above market prices. Those deals have always suggested the same kind of money laundering that added to the conviction of Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, but if these accusations are accurate, Russia did far more for Trump than buy his gilded condos.

If they are true, this would show that Donald Trump was 100% dependent on the Russian government for his “big comeback.” It would mean that he was completely beholden to Putin for his real estate, for his golf courses, for his candidacy—for everything.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. waits for the arrival of former US President George H.W. Bush at the US Capitol Rotunda on December 3, 2018 in Washington, DC.  | Jabin Botsford - Pool/Getty Images

Roberts worries about the state of our democracy even as his decisions have weakened democratic structures.

Chief Justice John Roberts handed down his 2019 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary Tuesday evening, an annual tradition that sends Supreme Court reporters scrambling to read the document before they can disperse to New Year’s Eve parties.

The chief justice typically begins each report with a lengthy preamble. In some cases, the preamble crosses the line into subtle political commentary and even advocacy. The bulk of Roberts’s 2019 preamble is a call for “civic education.”

“We have come to take democracy for granted,” the chief writes, “and civic education has fallen by the wayside.”

Roberts, who flirted with becoming a historian before choosing law school instead, likes to begin his annual reports with historical anecdotes. His most recent report is no exception: He begins it with a story of how future Chief Justice John Jay was injured as he tried to quell a riot. The lesson of this story, according to Roberts, is that the Constitution’s “principles leave no place for mob violence,” and that the risk of mob rule grows in an era when “social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale.”

Some commentators read Roberts’s warnings about democracy and mob rule as, in the New York Times’ Adam Liptak’s words, “addressed, at least in part, to the president himself.” Roberts is about to play a central, if largely ceremonial, role in President Trump’s impeachment trial, as the Constitution requires the chief justice to preside when the Senate tries a president.

“Even a casual reader could detect a timely subtext,” Liptak wrote, “one concerned with the foundational importance of the rule of law.” Liptak also points to a line in the report that praises Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for volunteering “as a tutor at a local elementary school, inspiring his court colleagues to join in the effort” as an example of how judges can help foster civic education.

Yet, even if the chief did intend his report as a subtle dig on Trump, the prescription Roberts offers is rather mild. Civic education is a good thing, but it is no solution to problems like partisan gerrymandering or voter suppression — problems that Roberts has exacerbated in his judicial opinions.

How John Roberts thinks about democracy

A statement from the Chief Justice of the United States about not taking democracy for granted would normally seem like an anodyne exhortation. But coming from the author of Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court’s 5-4 decision striking down much of the Voting Rights Act, it might raise an eyebrow.

Consider that Roberts also wrote the Court’s decision holding that federal courts may do nothing to stop partisan gerrymandering. And that he decided that it is unconstitutional to prevent rich donors from buying access to elected officials. “Government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford,” Roberts wrote in McCutcheon v. FEC (2014).

Roberts, in other words, handed down a series of rulings that add up to a rejection of the idea that democracy depends on a legal framework that allows free and fair elections to exist. He’s spent much of his judicial career tearing down parts of that framework, even as he uses his annual report to warn against threats to democracy.

But before you dismiss Roberts’s annual message as an empty gesture that serves to distract from his actual record, it’s also worth engaging with the entirety of his thoughts on democracy. Things are actually more complicated than you might think.

Roberts’s most famous opinion may be the one he wrote in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), which largely upheld the Affordable Care Act. The chief broke with his four Republican colleagues, each of whom voted to strike down the entire law. In the process, he laid out a fairly robust theory explaining why eliminating a health law hated by Republicans was not the proper role of the judiciary.

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

A few years later, Roberts concluded his opinion in King v. Burwell (2015), another decision rejecting a political lawsuit seeking to undercut Obamacare, with a similar warning: “In a democracy, the power to make the law rests with those chosen by the people. Our role is more confined.”

The very next day, Roberts handed down a dissenting opinion that received far less love from the sort of people who support Obamacare: his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which argued that the Constitution does not protect a right to marry people of the same sex. But Roberts’s Obergefell opinion was as much a warning against conservative judicial overreach as it was an attack on marriage equality.

Roberts’s theory in Obergefell is, once again, that important policy decisions should be made by the legislature and not by the judiciary. “If I were a legislator,” he wrote, “I would certainly consider [same-sex marriage] as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.”

What makes his Obergefell decision interesting is that he also rails against efforts to implement conservative economic policy through litigation. Much of Roberts’s opinion is an attack on Lochner v. New York (1905), an infamous decision from an age when the Supreme Court routinely struck down progressive labor legislation. A growing movement of legal conservatives hope to revive Lochner and similar decisions, but Roberts wants no part of this movement.

Lochner’s sin, Roberts wrote in his Obergefell dissent, was the Court’s decision to impose its “naked policy preferences” upon a nation that should be governed by elected lawmakers.

So, while Roberts’s actual voting rights decisions show little regard for voting rights, there is still a powerful thread of pro-democratic rhetoric woven into Roberts’s opinions. When he breaks with his Republican colleagues, he often does so on the grounds that those colleagues want to implement policy decisions that should be left to elected officials.

What Roberts gets wrong

That brings us back to the chief’s 2019 report. The theory behind that report is that democracy is suffering because the public lacks an adequate understanding of how our government functions. “In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale,” Roberts writes, “the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”

Roberts praises judicial efforts to close this knowledge gap, including a project by the Administrative Office of the Courts to produce “classroom-ready curriculum materials on teen-relevant topics,” and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to help “found iCivics, a non-profit that engages students in meaningful civic learning through free teacher resources, including video gaming.”

The vision of democracy that emerges from Roberts’s writings, in other words, is less anti-democratic than it is blinkered. Roberts appears to view democracy as an individual burden, carried by citizens who must be properly informed (perhaps through campaign ads funded by wealthy donors), rather than as a system that can only be maintained through legal structures such as a campaign finance regime and laws protecting voting rights.

Liberals — and supporters of liberal democracy generally — are unlikely to find much comfort in Roberts’s vision. It matters little to a disenfranchised black voter if Roberts acted without malice when he struck down the Voting Rights Act.

There is a very real divide between Roberts and, say, the four conservative justices who dissented in NFIB. Roberts is unlikely to do much to protect free and fair elections directly — though he has shown some willingness to break with his Republican colleagues in extreme cases — but he has been significantly more willing to protect the power of lawmakers to actually make laws once those lawmakers are in office.

The problem for both small-d democrats and large-d Democrats, however, is that the ability to make laws means little if you cannot win elections because the Supreme Court has dismantled the country’s voting rights regime. Civic education is necessary to a functioning democracy, but it is not sufficient. Democracy also requires the kinds of structures and institutions that Roberts’s decisions have done so much to weaken.

A Hummer in 2009. | Getty Images

Arnold Schwarzenegger brought us the Hummer. The recession took it away.

It was June 1990 and Arnold Schwarzenegger was shooting Kindergarten Cop on location in Oregon. Given the actor’s preposterously prolific career as an action star in the ’90s, the film in which Schwarzenegger plays a police officer who reluctantly goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher could have been lost to time. That is, if it wasn’t for Schwarzenegger’s discovery of what would become an exceptional passion of his: a military-grade Humvee, the nearly 6,000-pound vehicle used by the armed forces.

“He just went ape for that machine,” said his agent, Lou Pitts, as quoted in the unauthorized biography Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I mean, it was big, it was unique, and it was something that was larger than him.”

In this vehicle that dwarfed even the beefiest of men, Schwarzenegger saw a business opportunity. He contacted AM General, the heavy-automotive manufacturer behind the Humvee (the military vehicle on which the Hummer is based) and other purpose-driven vehicles, to communicate his adoration. He was sure the Hummer needed to be made available for purchase to regular people, and though the company was initially hesitant, the Hummer was introduced to the civilian market in 1992.

Though it wasn’t an immediate hit, the vehicle had become a cultural phenomenon by the early aughts. Its position as a symbol of early-2000s excess and militarist aesthetic obsession was cemented by its recession-induced demise: The last Hummer H3 was produced in May 2010. Until now.

Kevin Winter/ImageDirect/Getty Images

In January 2020, General Motors Company announced it will launch the GMC Hummer EV — an electric vehicle, of all things. It will debut in May 2020, with an ad airing during the Super Bowl. It’s been a long road to get there.

Consumers took their time warming up to the car, as Jim Lynch, the owner of the first dealership to exclusively sell Hummers, remembers. “They’re rough around the edges,” Lynch says. “They were designed to be a military truck, and they were expensive and weren’t very refined.” Besides slapping in an air conditioning unit and a radio, AM General did very little to make the Hummer more accommodating for everyday users.

Even if they weren’t very practical, they were still widely coveted soon after launch. “I remember when I was a kid, you’d see a Hummer rarely and you would think, ‘That’s the biggest fucking thing I’ve seen before,’” says Doug DeMuro, an Autotrader editor and YouTuber with more than 3 million followers, recalling his awe for the car as a kid in the ’90s. In one video, DeMuro tours the 2006 H1 Alpha, pointing out its numerous quirks: an absence of airbags, a dinky steering wheel he compares to that of an arcade game, and hooks on the Hummer’s hood that allow it to be dropped from the sky by a helicopter. The selling point of the vehicle is its unparalleled abilities in off-roading, which necessitated its design, but it was impossible to have a car that maintained this ability and measured up to the average comfort standards for an everyday car.

In 1999, General Motors bought the brand from AM General and became responsible for its promotion, and that’s when the Hummer became unavoidable. The vehicle’s outlandishly masculine aesthetic made marketing rather simple for the company — all it had to do was prey on a man’s fear of being emasculated. The timing was particularly ripe for this marketing tactic: The word “metrosexual” had been coined in 1994, and the concept of a well-groomed, urbane man was cropping up in both brand campaigns and everyday conversation, threatening traditional masculinity.

“Perceiving the metrosexual as a mockery or threat to ‘real’ masculinity, some have tried to put the notion to rest,” Margaret Ervin writes in her essay “The Might of the Metrosexual,” published in the book Performing American Masculinities. “But the advent of the metrosexual heralds a very real change in the social construction of masculinity.” The creation of the label crumbled the long-held homogeneic idea of masculinity as an innate way of being for straight American men. As Ervin went on to explain, the admission that men could choose to be cultured and manicured implicitly meant that men were deciding to present as traditionally masculine; it wasn’t an inherent byproduct of having a Y chromosome and being heterosexual. “This marketed set of alternative identities for men — regular, badass, metrosexual — undermines the notion that masculinity is a natural, essential category,” Ervin writes.

In the wake of metrosexuality’s rise, men grasped for ways to prove their devotion to traditional masculinity. In 2006, Hummer ran an advertisement that focused on a man buying tofu and vegetables at the grocery store. He notices that the man behind him is buying massive piles of meat, clocks a Hummer ad on the back cover of a magazine next to the cash register, and races to a Hummer dealership after completing his purchase. “Restore the balance” was the ad’s tagline, which had been changed from the original — “reclaim your masculinity” — following criticism. The Hummer succeeded by making itself look like the obvious choice for heterosexual men.

From practically the outset of the Hummer’s availability to civilians and the coinage of “metrosexuality,” the vehicle’s link to traditional masculinity has been its main strength. As cited in The Hummer: Myths and Consumer Culture’s “Primordial Enchantment” essay, a ‘94 Forbes article purported that driving a Hummer will “inevitably … alter one’s hormonal balance,” allowing a man who had become softened by society to connect with his inner alpha male. In “Primordial Enchantment,” a piece that considers the media’s response to the Hummer, author Shane Gunster wrote of the intrinsic biological essentialism of the car’s marketing: “The rhetoric is that of emancipation, authenticity, and joyful regression: The aggressive behavior and atavistic fantasies inspired by the Hummer are applauded as expressive of the true needs and desires that stand at the core of what it means to be a ‘real’ man.”

The war on terror reinforced this anxiety and inspired men to gravitate toward traditional masculinity. In her 2007 book Terror Dream, author Susan Faludi cited Hollywood films, a Washington Post article on the “return of the alpha male,” and morning news segments following 9/11 in her documentation of this phenomenon. The same impulses that still lead fearful Americans to buy guns they’ll likely never need to use drove them to, well, drive Hummers. Whether you were a soccer mom looking to demonstrate your support for the troops while you picked up groceries or a middle-aged man wanting to show the public you weren’t ready to give in to the new masculinity, the Hummer did an adequate job of communicating your take on the cultural climate.

Shortly after 9/11, June 2002 saw the timely release of the Hummer H2. The H2’s redesign, for which it had GM to thank, meant it was more hospitable to the everyman, both in comfort and in aesthetic. The H1s looked more like something you’d find shrunken down and shelved next to a G.I. Joe doll in a toy shop — but the H2s were rounder and shinier, their magnitude more a symbol of early-aughts excess. Close to 12,000 H1s were sold between ’92 and ’06, but drivers rushed to dealerships for the H2, which sold more than 18,000 its first year in a huge jump for the Hummer line.

Elwood Watson, a professor at East Tennessee State University who has written about masculinity in academic publications, books, and for the Good Men Project website, sees the morphing nature of masculinity as being linked to the relative youth of America. Different contexts merit different gender expressions, he says, and compared to much older Latin American, African, and European nations that have more fixed ideas of masculinity, the US is still figuring out for what, exactly, its context calls. The nations that have more self-assured understandings of masculinity, Watson explains, ultimately create more relaxed environments for their men. Relative to other countries, American masculinity is a confused teenager, thrashing around in an attempt to find itself and feel understood. Watson credits the 21st century with major advances in the reshaping of masculinity, the most dramatic development being the dialogue surrounding toxic masculinity.

The Hummer’s heft made it susceptible to criticism not only on an aesthetic basis, but also because its weight made it notoriously bad on gas mileage, and thus awful for the environment. In a study published in 2010, Marius Luedicke, Craig Thompson, and Markus Giesler examined the polarizing vehicle by interview interviewing owners and inspecting anti-Hummer forums, like fuH2.com.

“Interestingly, many Hummer owners I met cared deeply about the environment,” Luedicke tells me. “They only have an understanding of how the car contributes to pollution compared to a Prius. ... Being accused of harming the environment made them laugh, as they thought the Prius driver does not understand the science, rather than reconsider their consumption choice.” Fans and owners of the vehicle ultimately found the image it evoked too alluring to prioritize its negative environmental impact.

The Hummer was a cartoonish relic of old masculinity that hadn’t yet stopped to second-guess itself. It was uselessly macho, even if the features were technically implemented with the intention to be useful; for most drivers, the knowledge of its ability was more alluring than actually putting it to use. The average American, like the average American car, will never really have to enter battle. The Hummer’s abilities became a marketing ploy: The vehicles were shown off-roading in commercials with the same wonder you might imagine in a spot for a children’s toy tank, followed by panning to the children residing over their toy set, playing God.

In 2005, when Doug DeMuro wrote a series for his column at Jalopnik in which he allowed his audience to vote on which car he would buy and drive for months, the overwhelming consensus was that he buy a Hummer. “I think for people who grew up in the ’90s, we’ve always found that car alluring,” DeMuro tells me, explaining his viewers’ attraction to it. “It was so big and so wide, and the military and all that. But nobody wants to personally own that. I think what drove them to recommend it to me was, ‘Hey, here’s our chance to find out what it’s like, but we don’t have to actually take the plunge to buy this ridiculous vehicle.’”

BG004/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Along with the benefit to drivers who were less likely to grow weary of the uncomfortable car, its high sticker price and the cost of refueling made more sense for the wealthy. The problem with this? When the stock market crashed in 2008, the majority of people were suddenly worried about money. The Hummer was among the many victims of the Great Recession: GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, and the Hummer brand was dismantled the following year.

Since the last original Hummer came off of the production line, we’ve watched masculinity morph and create new dominant expressions. According to a 2011 study by Ilana Demantas, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, the recession’s greater effect on men meant many of them were left to reconsider how to define themselves when they were no longer the “breadwinner.” This shift naturally left many men embracing what was traditionally considered women’s work, as Demantas pointed out, thus altering the range of what masculinity could be.

The Hummer’s brand identity, more than mere sales numbers, is what made it a success in the early aughts. In the past decade, we’ve seen another car company’s branding propel it into popularity: the Tesla. The company’s branding has always pushed innovation and sustainability, an ideology completely opposed to the Hummer’s emphasis on traditional values and, more obviously, absolute disinterest in improving fuel efficiency. Along with the rise of the Tesla, there’s been a notable shift in the automobile industry toward SUVs, with SUVs and pickup trucks accounting for 70 percent of vehicle purchases in 2019, up from 53.2 percent in 2003. But despite the persistence of these gas guzzlers, the new electric Hummer coming in spring 2020 embraces the same kind of sustainable messaging as Tesla.

We still have Schwarzenegger driving his daughter to lunch in his Hummer, but maybe one day soon, they’ll all be making the switch to the Cybertruck — or the Hummer EV.

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An attack on the Baghdad International Airport has resulted in the death of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force General Qasem Solemani, and the United States has taken responsibility. The strike was first reported by Iraqi State TV on Friday. 

Previously, the BBC reported that Iraqi security sources had reported at least eight people killed in the airstrike; no responsibility for the airstrike has been confirmed.

US officials told Reuters news agency they had carried out strikes against targets linked to Iran but gave no further details.

As yet there has been no official confirmation of a death or a US attack.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, told Reuters that Gen Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis had been killed.

As noted by the Washington Post, it is “not clear who carried out the strike, but the death of Solemani, the Iranian Quds Force commander, seems certain to send tensions soaring between the United States and Iran.”

As of this writing, neither Iran nor the United States have confirmed Solemani’s death.

This is a developing story. 

Friday, Jan 3, 2020 · 2:15:00 AM +00:00 · Jessica Sutherland

The New York Times is now reporting that Solemani, al-Muhandis, and PMF public relations leader Mohammed Ridha Jabri were killed in a second attack on two cars which followed the three-rocket attack on the Baghdad airport; the rocket attack, the Times reports, resulted in no injuries.

According to a general with the Iraqi Joint Command, General Suleimani and Mr. Ridha, the militia public relations official, arrived by plane at Baghdad International Airport from Syria.

Two cars stopped at the bottom of the airplane steps and picked them up. Mr. al-Muhandis was in one of the cars.

As the two cars left the airport, they were bombed, the general said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

The strike was the second attack at the airport within hours.

Friday, Jan 3, 2020 · 2:33:32 AM +00:00 · Jessica Sutherland

The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. is being blamed for the attack.

The deaths were confirmed by Ahmed al-Assadi, spokesman for a political coalition with close ties to the militias that Mr. Soleimani and Mr. Mohandes led as well as other officials within the Popular Mobilization Forces.The PMF formally accused the U.S. of the attack.

Friday, Jan 3, 2020 · 2:58:27 AM +00:00 · Jessica Sutherland

CNN’s Anderson Cooper just read the Pentagon’s statement, taking full responsibility for the attack, and the death of Solemani.

At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months—including the attack on December 27th—culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.

This stake was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.

Just minutes before the Department of Defense released the above statement, Donald Trump, currently at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, sent the following wordless tweet:

x

pic.twitter.com/VXeKiVzpTf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020

This story and headline has been updated to reflect confirmation of the United States’ involvement.

Anti-abortion rights protesters, with red tape over their mouths, stand in silent protest in front of the Supreme Court in 2019. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

As the election year starts, over 200 lawmakers are taking an ideological stand against abortion.

Two days into the 2020 election year, Republicans are staking their ground: They’re coming for Roe v. Wade.

In an amicus curie brief released Thursday, 205 Republican lawmakers, including 39 senators, asked the Supreme Court to consider whether Roe, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case protecting the right to an abortion, “should be reconsidered and, if appropriate, overruled.”

They’re weighing in on June Medical Services v. Gee, a key abortion-related case set to be heard in early March determining whether the state of Louisiana can require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Advocates predict that, if the Louisiana law is upheld, two of the remaining three abortion clinics in the state will close down.

Abortion rights advocates sounded the alarm Thursday, warning that the legal battle over Roe is now in full swing. “The anti-choice movement is no longer trying to hide their real agenda,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a statement. “They are gunning to end Roe, criminalize abortion and punish women. If it wasn’t clear why we fought like hell to stop [Supreme Court justice] Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation before, it should be crystal clear now.”

But beyond the specifics of this case, the brief represents an ideological statement for Republicans as they enter what is expected to be a bitterly fought election year. And judging by the brief, the party has its sights set squarely on eliminating the right to legal abortion.

While several Republican senators in hotly contested reelection battles such as Susan Collins (ME) and Martha McSally (AZ) withheld their support, two anti-abortion House Democrats, Dan Lipinski (IL) and Collin Peterson (MN) added their names to the brief with their colleagues across the aisle.

With Roe at stake, all eyes will be on the Supreme Court for oral arguments in this case on March 4 — and on Republican lawmakers on the campaign trail in 2020.

June Medical Services v. Gee will be the first big abortion case heard by the new court

Gee will be the first abortion case heard by the Supreme Court since Kavanaugh was appointed to the bench last year. The case centers on a 2014 Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Abortion advocates argue that such privileges are unnecessary because complications from abortion care are relatively rare and if a serious medical emergency occurred during an abortion, a patient would be transported to a local hospital which would have no choice but to administer treatment regardless of any admitting privileges.

The law, advocates say, is what’s known as a “TRAP” (targeted regulations on abortion providers) law, or a law that looks at first glance like a regulation to increase safety for abortion patients but is really designed to make it harder for clinics to operate.

The case is essentially a relitigation of the 2016 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which struck down a nearly identical law in Texas. Why would the court take up nearly the same case just three years after ruling on essentially the same issue? Quite simply, it’s Kavanaugh’s presence on the bench, as Vox’s Anna North and Ian Millhauser explained:

But the Supreme Court today is different from what it was in 2016. Gee is the first abortion-related case the Supreme Court will hear on the merits since Justice Brett Kavanaugh replaced the more moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy. For many years, Kennedy was the Court’s “swing” vote on abortion — typically voting to uphold abortion restrictions but also recoiling at laws that cut so deep into the right to an abortion that they virtually nullified it.

Kavanaugh, by contrast, is overwhelmingly likely to vote with his conservative colleagues to uphold the abortion restriction at issue in Gee. The Gee decision may not be the final straw for Roe v. Wade — indeed, it is fairly likely that the Court will prefer to dismantle the right to an abortion in incremental steps. But it is likely to, at the very least, be the beginning of the end.

Republican lawmakers, however, don’t appear to want to settle for an incremental rollback of abortion rights in the US. While making arguments on several key provisions of the case, such as whether June Medical Services has standing to bring the suit in the first place, the Republican brief argues that Roe is a “radically unsettled precedent” while pointing out that two of the original justices who joined the majority in the case have since repudiated their ruling. “Roe’s jurisprudence has been haphazard from the beginning,” reads the brief. “Roe did not actually hold that abortion was a ‘fundamental’ constitutional right, but only implied it.”

The brief also asked the court to reconsider the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which upheld Roe but allowed states to enact some restrictions on the medical procedure, as long as they didn’t impose an “undue burden.” The 207 lawmakers, however, argue that federal courts have struggled to consistently apply that standard. “After two decades of inconsistency, the Court officially disavowed ‘fundamental right’ status for abortion and strict scrutiny review, adopting instead an ‘undue burden’ test in Casey,” reads the brief. “As a result, consistency and predictability continue to be undermined as federal courts struggle to apply the Roe/Casey standard.”

Abortion remains a divisive electoral issue

The majority of the country — 58 percent of Americans, according to a 2018 Pew poll — believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But that support belies an increasingly partisan division: While 36 percent of Republicans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, over 75 percent of Democrats believe the same.

As North explained last year, that wasn’t always the case; in “the 1970s, politicians’ views on abortion didn’t break down along neat party lines”:

The story of the abortion debate since the 1970s is one of party leaders moving farther and farther apart on the issue. The reasons, scholars and activists say, are a combination of grassroots activism and establishment political strategy. The results are a landscape that would be unrecognizable to many voters in 1982 — or even five years ago.

And in that increasingly polarized atmosphere, anti-abortion activists have seen an opening. They — and by extension the Republican party — have been building toward this Supreme Court showdown for the better part of the last decade, as North explained:

At the turn of the decade, statehouses went red across America. Republicans gained control of 11 state legislatures and increased their majorities in three more; in some places, like Alabama and North Carolina, they erased Democratic majorities that had existed since the 19th century. When the votes were counted, the GOP had added 680 seats in state legislatures around the country.

On abortion, the impact was swift and powerful. Teresa Fedor, a Democrat who has served in the Ohio legislature since 2001, remembers that before 2010, “Democrats were able to really have an impact on policy.” After 2010, when Republicans took control of the state House of Representatives and the governors’ mansion, she told Vox, it was “a full-on assault against women’s reproductive rights.”

In the next year alone, five anti-abortion bills passed in Ohio, Fedor said. The same thing happened around the country: Overall, more abortion restrictions were passed in 2011 than in any year since Roe established a right to the procedure in 1973.

In fact, the law in question in Gee was part of that initial anti-abortion wave, passing the Louisiana state legislature in 2011. It’s a reminder that elections have consequences, a lesson abortion advocates have recently taken to heart.

Reproductive rights advocates took direct aim at the lawmakers who signed on to the bill Thursday.

“These anti-abortion politicians are making it very clear — they want the Supreme Court to effectively ban abortion, precedent be damned,” said Samuel Lau, director of Federal Advocacy Media for Planned Parenthood Votes in a statement specifically naming Lipinski and Sens. Tillis (R-NC), Ernst (R-IA), and Cornyn (R-TX). “To the members of Congress who signed on to this amicus brief: Brace yourselves for the consequences you will face at the ballot box in November.”

But even after losing big with suburban women in 2018, the 205 Republican signees don’t seem concerned — instead, they’re into their anti-choice bona fides. After all, Republicans have been winning elections on abortion for decades, and judging by Thursday’s brief, a good many of them are counting on doing it again in 2020.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
She is like a ghost who is very concerned about purchasing organic food products.

Today's News:

FADE IN:

EXT.  OUTER SPACE

                              TITLE CRAWL
               So IAN MCDIARMID is alive, a plot point
               already revealed in fucking FORTNITE, but
               for everyone else we just skipped over a
               major dramatic development in the opening
               crawl, yay us!  As we rejoin the story,
               ADAM DRIVER grabs a SITH WAYFINDER and
               tracks down the Emperor in like TWO
               MINUTES, a task which will take
               generations of good guys DECADES to fail
               at doing.

INT.  WELCOME TO MCDIARMID'S, OVER FIVE BILLION SOULS TURNED

Inside the evil lair, ADAM finds IAN plugged into an ARCADE CLAW GRABBER
GAME.

                              ADAM DRIVER
               How the fuck are you alive?  You got
               thrown down a chasm, exploded, then
               exploded AGAIN.  If you had shiny chrome
               Stormtrooper armour that'd be ONE thing,
               but this is bullshit.
                 (raises lightsabre)

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               Wait, I can offer you great power.  I've
               been secretly building a fleet of Star
               Destroyers...  underground?  Seriously,
               how the fuck does that work.  Or did I
               build them and THEN bury them even though
               nobody knows where this planet is? 
               Anyway, allow me to dramatically
               Force-lift them to the surface, bwah ha
               ha!!
                 (does so)

                              ADAM DRIVER
               That's most impressive.  I guess lifting
               them into orbit would be like zero effort
               for you, compared to that.  Could probably
               do it without barely trying.  Like, for
               instance, if some final battle all hinged
               on those ships NOT being fully operational
               at their current altitude, you could
               likely just sneeze and-

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               SILENCE!  Kill Daisy Ridley for me, and
               I'll give you control of the fleet! 
               Ultimate power shall be ours!!
                 (evil grin)
               Plus I've had some ideas for new uniforms
               that I think will really pop.  I'll send
               you my designs, we'll talk.

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Okay.  So we message "hey Daisy the secret
               to your heritage is here on this planet",
               wait for her to show up, then I murder
               her?

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               Oh PLEASE that is not NEARLY convoluted
               enough.  We've got 162 fucking minutes to
               fill you know.

INT.  FLOATING ICEBERG PLANET

Meanwhile, Resistance heroes JOHN BOYEGA, OSCAR ISAAC, CHEWBACCA, R2-D2,
and GIANT DILDO MONSTER are meeting a contact with SPY information!

                                 ALIEN
               Here you are!  The SPY has told us that
               the Emperor, who we all know is alive
               already, is hatching a big huge evil plan,
               as you would already assume, on
               (surprise!) the mythical Sith planet that
               nobody knows where it is.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               I'm sure glad we're risking our lives for
               this super top secret intel.

TIE FIGHTERS attack, but OSCAR ISAAC escapes them with HYPERSPACE
SKIPPING because every new movie has to think up a WHOLE BRAND NEW WAY
to TOTALLY FUCK OVER all previous rules of hyperspace.  

EXT.  RESISTANCE HOME BASE PLANET

DAISY RIDLEY is training with floating rocks and shit, trying to
download ARCHIVED JEDI FILES from the FORCE CLOUD.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Opening bookend moment established.  Now
               to confer with my new trainer, Carrie
               Fisher who is right over there!

                             CARRIE FISHER
               Yes, I'm standing patiently over here as
               you train.  All things considered we did a
               pretty damn good job of integrating me
               into this movie, but let's not get too
               fancy with our blocking, okay?

The MILLENNIUM FALCON returns, and our HEROES gather with what remains
of THE RESISTANCE, mostly reduced to a bunch of JJ ABRAMS'S OLD TV
BUDDIES.

                            KELLY MARIE TRAN
               I'm still here though, to keep Last Jedi
               fans happy, but almost all my lines and
               actions have been given to other
               characters, to keep Last Jedi haters
               happy!  This is going to be kind of a
               theme.

                             KELLY MARIE
                            TRAN DOMINIC
                                MONAGHAN
               Shit, the spy message says that the
               Emperor's evil fleet will start
               murderizing the Galaxy in 16 hours.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Sixteen hours?  That's barely enough time
               to prep a mission, go to another planet,
               wander about looking for clues, do a
               desert chase, get sucked underground,
               escape, repair a derelict spaceship,
               confront Adam Driver, escape, go to
               ANOTHER planet, wander about, find a black
               market droid mechanic, overhaul C-3PO's
               internal systems, rescue Chewbacca from a
               Star Destroyer, get captured, escape
               again, go to ANOTHER planet, crashland,
               repair the Falcon, scavenge a wreck, split
               up as we all fly back here while Daisy
               soul-searches on YET ANOTHER planet, and
               then assemble our entire remaining forces
               to follow Daisy to YET ANOTHER SUPER
               REMOTE planet to take out the fleet!
                 (pause)
               Well, maybe just enough time.

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               If the First Order is taking control of
               this giant fleet they're gonna need
               thousands of people operating it.  We
               could look for ships carrying troops
               towards uncharted regions and follow them?

                             CARRIE FISHER
               Oh PLEASE that is not NEARLY convoluted
               enough.  We've still got...
                 (checks watch)
               ...151 fucking minutes to fill you know.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               According to Hamill's diary, we need a
               Sith wayfinder to find the secret Sith
               planet of Excedrin.  He thought there was
               a clue on the desert planet of Pajama so
               I'll go there while you-

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               Oh no no no.  We split up last time and
               everyone couldn't stop whining about it. 
               THIS time, we stick together.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Plus this way, our one group will have to
               do three times as much plot as if we'd
               split into three groups!

INT.  ADAM DRIVER'S SUPER COOL FIRST ORDER SHIP

ADAM remakes his mask to have FUNKY RED HIGHLIGHTS, to match the new
FINAL ORDER branding, and meets with the top brass including DOMHNALL
GLEASON and RICHARD E. GRANT!

                            RICHARD E. GRANT
               All is proceeding well, Supreme Leader. 
               Our tailors have sent samples of the
               updated uniforms, and I must say, they're
               spiffy as fuck.  The red trim really sends
               the message that this isn't your Dad's
               First Order, y'know?  Mwah hah, the Spice
               Girls will rue the day they fired me.

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Excellent.  Now, while you continue openly
               funnelling thousands of new recruits from
               across the Galaxy to our ultra top secret
               location, I shall track down Daisy with
               the help of...  THE KNIGHTS OF REN!  Yes,
               finally, these long-anticipated badasses
               are gonna fucking BRING IT, yo!

                             KNIGHTS OF REN
                 (pose, badassedly)

EXT.  DESERT PLANET PAJAMA

Our heroes land in the middle of BURNING MAN.  DAISY gets a new NECKLACE
and an AWKWARD SOCIAL ENCOUNTER but suddenly finds herself FORCETIMING
with ADAM DRIVER!

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Hm, I can't see where you are, but as we
               set up last movie, I can grab physical
               items from you!  Ha!
                 (snatches "Lonely Planet" guidebook)
               Oh cool, I have a great idea for Mutant
               Vehicle.  See you soon!

DAISY warns the others, but the entire group of our main heroes is about
to be taken down by ONE SINGLE STORMGOOBER when they are saved by none
other than--

                           BILLY DEE WILLIAMS
               Yes it's me.  Years ago Mark Hamill and I
               came here, looking for the trail to the
               clue to the wayfinder to the planet
               Excedrin.  We couldn't find it, so Mark
               kept on looking and I just sort of stayed
               here.  I suggested checking the Sith
               leader's personal vault, but Hamill
               muttered something about having 120
               minutes to fill and fucked off.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Well now WE'RE here to search.  I'm sure
               you were just incompetent and we'll find
               it in no time, right guys?
                 (everyone nods)

                           BILLY DEE WILLIAMS
               Off you go then.  I'll stay here being
               absolutely no help.  

                             KELLY MARIE
                          TRAN OSCAR ISAAC
               Over here, I can hotwire these skiffs!

They grab some DESERT SKIFFS but are chased by NEW STORMTROOPERS who
have watched MAD MAX FURY ROAD like TWENTY TIMES!!  They BLAST the
TROOPERS but are themselves BLASTED and land in QUICKSAND!

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Daisy!  I never told you that-
                 (sinks)

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Ooh, I can't wait for THAT to pay off!  We
               wouldn't have brought it up otherwise,
               right?
                 (pause)
               Right?!?
                 (pause)
               God dammit.  Well maybe I should try
               levitating before
                 (sinks)

INT.  UNDERGROUND CAVERN

While above ground, the KNIGHTS OF REN strike INCREDIBLY BADASS POSES,
like SO BADASS, our heroes find themselves in a CAVERN!

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               This blows.  We're trapped down here with
               nothing but this stupid pile of bones and
               this dumb dagger covered in Sith runes. 
               Fuck.

                                 C-3P0
               These runes reveal the location of the
               wayfinder!  But my programming which lets
               me read Sith runes also forbids me from
               saying Sith runes out loud.  And let's not
               forget, I was programmed by a 10-year-old
               desert slave, so this makes ALL KINDS of
               fucking sense.

While our heroes process this they are suddenly confronted by a WOUNDED
UNDERGROUND SERPENT THING!

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               I guess we'll blast and lightsabre this
               thing dead now, as we do with most ugly
               creatures we find-

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               No wait!  I saw this trick on the
               Mandalorian.
                 (Force-heals serpent)

The SERPENT smiles, tips his hat, and opens a HOLE to the surface while
also offering CANAPES and REFRESHMENTS!

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Phew!  Now we can use this long-abandoned
               ship to get outta here, I'm sure it's
               stocked with replacement parts for
               everything that's broken.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               You fix the ship.  I...  sense something.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Is it Adam Driver coming to capture us,
               which might also mean his henchmen are
               nearby, and we should be extra careful?

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               If it were, I'd surely tell you.  Must be
               something else.
                 (stares into distance)

EXT.  JUST AROUND THE NEXT BOULDER

                             KNIGHTS OF REN
                 (do badass pose)
                 (capture Chewbacca offscreen)
                 (pose)

EXT.  BACK IN THE OPEN DESERT

DAISY realizes the feeling of DEJA VU is because the TEASER TRAILER is
about to happen.  Indeed, ADAM DRIVER drives his ship directly at her
and she flips and slices a WING right off, making him CRASH in a HUGE
FIREBALL!

                              ADAM DRIVER
                 (emerging unharmed)
               I think we can stop pretending that
               explosions mean anything.

DAISY spots a transport taking off which we believe CHEWBACCA is in! 
She FORCE-GRABS it, but ADAM FORCE-PUSHES it, causing stalemate!  DAISY
digs in and arm-stretches with all her might and FORCE-ZAPS it,
exploding the transport!

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               PRESUMABLY CHEWIE, NOOOOOOOO!!!!
                 (pause)
               Fuck, either this planet has MAJOR static
               electricity or I just learned something
               not-great about myself.  

Our heroes ESCAPE while ADAM watches them leave, and then digs his
wayfinder out of his crashed burning ship to plug into his next
identical custom TIE fighter.

                              ADAM DRIVER
               But I know where Excedrin is now, its
               coordinates will have been added to my
               star chart.  So why do I still need the

EXT.  THIEF PLANET KIJIJI

In order to dig the SITH RUNES out of C-3P0's memory, our heroes realize
they need the help of ace mechanic KELLY MARIE TRAN SOME NEW
RANDOM CGI UGLYCUTE ALIEN THING, who is on PLANET KIJIJI.

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               Gotta warn you I have backstory here,
               because obviously I'M the person
               everyone's most keen to learn the
               backstory of.  But if we're careful-

They are ambushed by THIEVES led by KERI RUSSELL!

                              KERI RUSSELL
               I fucking hate you Oscar, you abandoned
               me!  I should turn you all in right now!
                 (knocked down by Daisy)
               On second thought, you guys are awesome! 
               Yay Resistance!

                             KNIGHTS OF REN
                 (pose in alleyway, badassedly)

They take C-3P0 to have his MEMORY WIPED in order to get the SITH RUNE
MESSAGE.

                                 C-3P0
               I shall make this sacrifice for the
               greater good.  Farewell, my friends.  Ah
               this shall indeed be a bittersweet
               victory...  oh who am I kidding, we all
               know this is getting undone in like ten
               minutes.

                             NEW RANDOM CGI
                          UGLYCUTE ALIEN THING
               Boo baa zooey bloo!
                 (is not Baby Yoda)

                              REDEYE C-3P0
               DATA ACCESSED.  THE WAYFINDER IS ON ENDOR,
               AT THE CO-ORDINATES OF THE CRASHED DEATH
               STAR, THE MOST OBVIOUS FUCKING PLACE IT
               COULD BE, SURE WAS WORTH WIPING MY WHOLE
               MEMORY FOR THIS YOU ASSHOLES

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               OMG I just sensed Chewie is on Adam
               Driver's command ship that just entered
               orbit!  Bizarre that I didn't sense he was
               still alive back on Planet Pajama, or twig
               that I didn't sense him dying when the
               transport exploded.  But we have no way to
               reach him!

                              KERI RUSSELL
               Yes you do.  This flimsy-ass-looking spare
               part will let you land on anything
               anywhere.  It was my one and only ticket
               off this rock, but you need it more than
               I! Take it, and farewell!  I shall remain
               behind, and lead the struggle here!
                 (others leave)
               Or maybe I should fuck off in case they
               blow up the planet, DAMN but I'm fickle. 
               It's too bad I gave away my only means of-
                 (leaves)
               Sure, whatever.

INT.  ADAM DRIVER'S COMMAND SHIP

Our heroes LAND undetected and split up.  OSCAR and JOHN blast through a
bazillion TROOPERS, and find CHEWIE!  Then they blast through ANOTHER
zillion troopers until-

                              STORMTROOPER
               Oh hey we got the drop on them!  Everyone
               stop shooting so we can capture them
               instead, and then shoot them!

Meanwhile DAISY wanders off to ADAM'S personal quarters and FORCETIMES
him some more.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               You've got some 'splaining to do Adam. 
               Don't try figuring out where I am, let's
               just say-

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Oh hey, you're holding the Sith dagger
               which is in my room.  You're in my room.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Uh, no I'm not.  This is a cheapo knockoff
               dagger that I bought far away from here.

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Fine, I'll ignore that while we lightsabre
               duel.  VVMMMVV, VVVMMMVV, KRRZZZKZZK!! 
               VVMMMM

They knock over the DARTH HELMET!

                              ADAM DRIVER
               And I suppose that's a limited replica you
               ordered on Coruscant, huh.  EVERYONE BACK
               ON BOARD!

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Shit!

DAISY runs to a hangar bay just as ADAM lands!

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Now we can continue our personal standoff
               in person.  So when I said your parents
               were nobody?  I meant they were nobody... 
               WHO WASN'T RELATED TO EMPEROR PALPATINE,
               WHAAAA?!  Yep that's right, you have EVIL
               midichlorians and potential for unrivalled
               power!  Your Dad was the Emperor's son,
               and apparently the Force decided to skip
               that generation altogether.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Dammit, I had fifty bucks on Qui-Gon.

INT.  FLASHBACK TO DAISY'S PARENTS

A JEDI HUNTER interrogates the PALPATINES as to DAISY'S WHEREABOUTS!

                            BECKY PALPATINE
               Our daughter's not here I tells ya, we
               dumped her on a central, highly-patrolled
               planet before coming to this remote,
               unpatrolled one!  And she's certainly not
               that small child yelling and reaching
               after this ship, THAT'S for sure!

                             TED PALPATINE
               Nailed it, hon.
                 (stabbed)

                              JEDI HUNTER
               Convincing story, but I'm gonna look on
               this planet some more.  Here we go-
                 (steps outside ship)
                 (swallowed by quicksand)
                 (eaten by serpent, or just jerks it
                 and withers to nothing, who knows)
               Well I fucking suck.  And I'm who they
               send to hunt Jedi?
                 (dead)

INT.  BACK TO ADAM DRIVER'S COMMAND SHIP

Elsewhere on the ship OSCAR, JOHN, and CHEWIE are about to get executed
while being incredibly flippant about the whole thing.

                            DOMHNALL GLEESON
                 (shoots Troopers)
               Nope!  Turns out I'm the spy!  I hate
               Driver so much that I want him and the
               Final Order to get curbstomped, after
               which I'll assume control of the utterly
               defeated and useless...  I may need to
               revise this plan.  

Our heroes race to the FALCON, rescue DAISY, and zoom away!  DOMHNALL
reports back.

                            DOMHNALL GLEESON
               So you see, Richard, the Troopers were
               going to execute the Resistance scum, but
               they missed and killed each other and shot
               my leg, allowing the scum to escape.

                            RICHARD E. GRANT
               Plausible enough.  But we haven't had an
               evil boss randomly murder an underling yet
               so BUH BYE
                 (shoots Domhnall!)

EXT.  ENDOR

The FALCON crashlands in a FIELD and our heroes meet HORSE-RIDERS led by
NAOMI ACKIE.

                              NAOMI ACKIE
               Welcome.  My people and I were
               Stormtroopers, until we were ordered to
               massacre a helpless village, and somehow
               we...  sensed...  it was wrong.  Clearly
               it was the Force.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Wow, just like me!  I also was about to
               murder innocents until some...  Force... 
               told me it was bad.

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               So you were all rampaging sociopaths until
               the Force zapped your brain, cool.  Too
               bad the Force can't just transform ALL the
               baddies into good people, but then where's
               the challenge I guess?

They go look at the CRASHED DEATH STAR from RETURN OF THE JEDI which was
TOTALLY FUCKING ATOMIZED, WE ALL SAW IT, but nope, the most iconic
recognizable part is now crashed in the ocean over there.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Hey, when I match the dagger blade to the
               hull wreckage it points to where the
               wayfinder is!  

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               But seriously though, who was this Sith
               Dan Brown motherfucker, who knew the
               wayfinder was in the crashed Death Star
               but rather than take it, hide it, or
               destroy it, instead carved a dagger in the
               precise outline of the shattered hull to
               point out where the wayfinder is?  Which
               only works when held the exact right
               distance away at the right angle?  And
               then inscribed the location of this planet
               on the dagger before taking it fuck knows
               where?  Is there a painting of Ian
               McDiarmid with "So Dark the Walk of Sky"
               written on it?

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               Anyway, I guess this is where Daisy
               levitates herself and all of us over
               there.  That's gotta be easier than
               holding back a spaceship approaching
               escape velocity with full engines going-

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               I must follow the Jedi code, Oscar.  Never
               use an old skill when you can pull a brand
               new skill out of your ass!

DAISY HANG-GLIDES JETSKIS CATAMARANS over to the wreckage!

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               So the wayfinder is probably in the vault,
               but what are the odds that all the
               security devices are obliterated, but all
               the doors and levitating-object gizmos are
               in perfect working order?  I'm gonna have
               to find some way to-

                                 VAULT
                 (opens doors)
                 (flashing neon arrow points to
                 wayfinder)
               HELLO INTRUDER CAN I INTEREST YOU IN OUR
               FINE COLLECTION OF VALUABLE SITH
               ARTIFACTS, PLEASE HELP YOURSELF AND
               CONSIDER JOINING OUR LOYALTY REWARDS
               PROGRAM

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               That was easy.

                           EVIL DAISY RIDLEY
               Bwah ha ha!  Turn to evil Daisy, and you
               too could look vaguely like Natalie
               Portman!  Plus look at my cool
               double-blade switch-sabre!  You know only
               Sith are allowed double-bladed weapons!

Since DAISY knows EVIL DAISY is merely some kind of FORCE PROJECTION
MINDFUCK THINGIE, she chooses to DUEL it causing her to drop the
wayfinder!  It is picked up by...

                              ADAM DRIVER
               The only way you're finding planet
               Excedrin is with me!
                 (crushes wayfinder)
               Or by using the wayfinder in my ship, I
               hope you're not telepathing to your
               friends to go steal my ship right this
               second.
                 (pause)
               Or by searching my thoughts, like I did to
               you back in Episode 7, and could be a neat
               bookend device.
                 (pause)
               Or by tracking one of the new Star
               Destroyers we've already sent out to
               terrorize planets.

They begin LIGHTSABRE FIGHTING, working their way down to the LAKEFRONT
PROMENADE!

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Ooh look, I can Force-block your sabre
               thrust!

                              ADAM DRIVER
               And I can do the same to you!  Well that's
               a fun trick to introduce now and
               retroactively make all previous lightsabre
               fights look incompetent.  We should forget
               it and move on.

Back at base, CARRIE FISHER senses she must intervene, and
FORCE-PROJECTS to ADAM DRIVER at the cost of her life, a callback that
stretches all the way back to LAST MOVIE.  DAISY uses the distraction to
SKEWER ADAM!

                              ADAM DRIVER
                 (collapses)
                 (makes puppy dog eyes)

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Ugh, FINE
                 (Force-heals Adam)
               You're lucky you're cute.
                 (flies off in Adam's ship)

ADAM stares into the distance until GHOST HARRISON FORD shows up.

                          GHOST HARRISON FORD
               Yep, couldn't have Force-projected to
               prevent MY death, but I can barely stand
               these movies anyway so fuck it.  Anyway
               you're a good guy now Adam, and remember:
               bad guys talk the talk, good guys walk the
               walk.  

                              ADAM DRIVER
                 (nods)
               No more spoken lines after this scene, got
               it.

EXT.  OUTER SPACE

Meanwhile, a FINAL ORDER STAR DESTROYER uses its WANG CANNON to BLOW UP
PLANET KIJIJI since we haven't blown up a planet yet.  Which also
implies that the Final Order CAN deploy ships individually and DOESN'T
have to lift the entire goddamn fleet super slow all at once, and also
maybe the deadline ran out but maybe it didn't?  Fucking hell, Abrams.

EXT.  SAINT LUKEIA ISLAND

DAISY lands and WRECKS ADAM'S SHIP and is about to THROW MARK'S
LIGHTSABRE into the FIRE but!

                           GHOST MARK HAMILL
                 (catches it)
               Hey I can grab a lightsabre in ghost form!
                Well it's not like Force ghosts wielding
               real lightsabres could have helped in any
               situation over the previous eight movies.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               So this is where you inspire me to go
               fight instead of running away, right? 
               Nice, simple uplifting scene?

                           GHOST MARK HAMILL
               Oh sure.
                 (pause)
               Plus here's Carrie's lightsabre too, from
               when I gave her full Jedi training with
               flips and lightsabre duels and the whole
               bit!  Yes, Carrie's had full-fledged Jedi
               skills this whole trilogy!!  What a
               seamless retcon!

                              DAISY RIDLEY
                 (blinks)

                           GHOST MARK HAMILL
               And Chewbacca can turn to solid steel and
               fire lasers from his eyes!  Plus, R2-D2 is
               really Dr. Manhattan with a memory
               blocker, and-

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               STOP STOP IT JUST STOP.  Fine, gimme the
               lightsabres, plus I'll need your ship.  

MARK impressively lifts his X-WING FIGHTER from UNDERWATER, similar to
how YODA did in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, with the music and everything!

                           GHOST MARK HAMILL
               Hurray, I finally learned the trick which
               for a Jedi Master is as difficult as
               picking your nose!
                 (beams)

DAISY grabs the wayfinder from ADAM'S ship, hops in the X-WING and
blasts off!

INT.  RESISTANCE BASE

Meanwhile the GANG returns to base, restores C-3P0's memories
(WHAAAA?!?!?!!), and tries to deal with the loss of CARRIE.  But BILLY
DEE is there!

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               How'd you do it, Billy Dee?  How did you
               make it look remotely credible that an
               entire Rebellion hinged on like five
               people?

                           BILLY DEE WILLIAMS
               We had...  each other.
                 (smiles)
               I know that's vague as fuck, but my
               specific answer would be "We enlisted the
               help of the general population, and took
               down a transmitter so the Empire's big
               weapon was defenceless", which is exactly
               what you're gonna do anyway, so why point
               that out, y'know?

Everyone gathers to figure out THE BIG PLAN.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               R2-D2 did "Find My X-Wing" on Hamill's
               ship, so we can follow Daisy to the big
               finale.  And lucky for us, the Emperor
               decided to build his new fleet in the ONE
               PLACE where the atmosphere fucks with all
               their systems.

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               Plus, even though the Emperor had the
               whole planet to work with, he built all
               his ships like twenty feet apart, so they
               can't fly without nav relays or they'll
               all crash.  And the Final Order is so
               dependent on enhanced park assist, they
               can't just go slow while looking out the
               window like regular fucking people.

                             KELLY MARIE
                            TRAN DOMINIC
                                MONAGHAN
               Hey, what about Holdo Maneuvers? 
               Literally everyone in the audience is
               thinking this.

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               No that's a one-in-a-million shot!  Made
               ludicrously easy when your enemy fleet is
               packed together in a humongous blob, sure,
               but IT'S ONE IN A MILLION I TELLS YA!

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               But even if we missed the fleet there's
               the whole planet to aim at with the
               Emperor on it...  fine fine, we need a big
               battle, I know.

EXT.  PLANET EXCEDRIN, NOW WITH 300% MORE STROBE FLASHING JUST TO PISS
EVERYONE OFF

DAISY lands and confronts IAN, watched by THOUSANDS OF RANDOM SITH
ASSHOLES who apparently futz about in heavy robes 24/7, or who knows,
maybe there's a NICE SUBURB twenty minutes away where they all live.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               So you're my granddad.  I have to ask: how
               the fuck did your pallid shrivelled ass
               have sex with anyone?

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               Well, I put on my robe and space wizard
               hat...

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Sorry I asked.  But despite your attempts
               to kill me, I've survived!

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               Kill you?!?  I wanted you here!  Except
               when I was trying to kill you.  Now YOU
               must kill ME!  I think.  Honestly I've
               lost track.

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               What, kill you and take control of the
               entire Final Order fleet, then order them
               to surrender?  I'm not falling for THAT
               old trick!

Above them, the RESISTANCE FLEET arrives!  Much ZAPPITY ZAP happens!

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Ground team, prepare for the assault on
               the nav tower!

                            RICHARD E. GRANT
               Hm.  Let's switch to my ship's nav tower,
               that will be safe from their ground
               forces!

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Haha, in Star Wars any flat surface counts
               as "ground", fuck altitude or atmosphere
               or any of that shit!  We'll land right on
               your ship, so there!

                            RICHARD E. GRANT
               Oh.  So once you've landed on my ship I'll
               just switch back to the planetside nav
               tower, fuck you.

                              JOHN BOYEGA
                 (pause)
               That's not fair.  

INT.  BACK AT PALPATINE'S CLONING EMPORIUM

Meanwhile ADAM DRIVER has arrived and runs in to help DAISY!

                             KNIGHTS OF REN
                 (pose in Adam's way, badassedly)

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               I'll ForceTime Adam, he can grab the extra
               lightsabre from my belt!  Hm, no style
               points for that.  Okay, I'll bring my
               activated sabre behind my back...  and
               then reveal...  ABRACADABRA!  It's gone! 
               Now, pick a card, any card.

Indeed ADAM now has a lightsabre and he ATTACKS!

                             KNIGHTS OF REN
                 (utterly, completely pwned)
               See, this is why we usually do our shit
               OFF screen.

ADAM and DAISY stand side-by-side against IAN MCDIARMID and wait
patiently for his attack.  He FORCE-GRABS them!

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               Aha, you two are a diode in the Force!! 
               Which means I can use you to covert my
               Force lightning from AC current to DC, or
               some bullshit!  AW YEAH IT'S BACK IN BLACK
               TIME BABY
                 (sucks their energy)
               Mmm, your energy is regenerating me!  I
               will suck NOT QUITE all of it from you!  

                              DAISY RIDLEY
                 (struggling)
               Actually it's a Force DYAD, which if you
               consult Wookipedia is actually a whole
               other thing...  god damn these movies
               require a lot of supplemental research.

IAN throws ADAM down a HOLE and DAISY collapses!  Above, the SPACESHIP
BATTLE is going not so well for our plucky heroes.

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               Shit they killed Greg Grunberg!!  And he's
               not major enough to just bring back five
               minutes later!  NOOOOOO
                 (sighs)
               I'm sorry everyone, it looks like we're
               fucked.

                           BILLY DEE WILLIAMS
                 (over radio)
               On your left, Isaac.
                 (huge new fleet appears!)

                              OSCAR ISAAC
                 (brightens)
               Hurray!!  Just when all seems lost, I get
               a radio message from the Falcon saying
               massive reinforcements have arrived to my
               left!!!  Wheeee!!

                              CHRIS EVANS
                 (heavy sigh)
                 (realizes it's LITERALLY THE FALCON in
                 both movies)
                 (brain explodes)

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Wow, for years we tried and failed to get
               everyone on our side, and Billy Dee does
               it in under an hour.  Do we suck or is he
               just that awesome?

                           BILLY DEE WILLIAMS
               What can I say, I've got a voice made for
               radio, baby.

                           GHOST MARK HAMILL
                 (grumbling to self)
               my big sacrifice was supposed to have
               inspired the whole fucking galaxy already
               but fuck me i guess

The TIDE TURNS, but then IAN zaps the ENTIRE GOOD GUY FLEET, covering
EVERYTHING with SPARKLY LIGHTNING BOLTS!

                              OSCAR ISAAC
               Ack, the Emperor's attack is, uh, making
               us float around and stuff!  We're
               helpless!!

                            ENEMY PILOTS AND
                                GUNNERS
                 (not firing)
               Oooh, pretty.

Below, DAISY is lying defeated but has a realization!

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Wait a sec...  if I've seen the
               Mandalorian, that means I have Disney+! 
               Which gives me access to ALL previous Star
               Wars content in the Disney Vault!
                 (Force-binges)
               Thanks to these random audio clips I can
               now..  RISE!  RISE, that is!  Yep, gonna
               RISE now!
                 (winks to camera)

                             IAN MCDIARMID
               Oh you again.
                 (stops zapping fleet)
                 (zaps at Daisy)

                              DAISY RIDLEY
                 (Force-summons both sabres)
               Well ONE lightsabre can block your
               lightning, but TWO...  can REDIRECT it
               back at you!!  Take that!

                             IAN MCDIARMID
                 (being zapped)
               Damn, General Grevious could have kicked
               my ass, he had FOUR lightsabres.  But all
               I have to do is stop zapping, and-
                 (keeps zapping)
               ARGHHH WHY, WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS TO
               MYSELF, I'M SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING
               MASTERMIND

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               AND I...  AM...  IRON MAN!!
                 (pause)
               Shit sorry MONEYPENNY no wait ROBIN shit
               BLOFELD fuck I'M SPARTACUS NO DAMMIT I AM
               LEGEND, I HAVE NO MOUTH BUT I MUST SCREAM
               OH CHRIST ON A STICK WHY CAN I NOT GET
               THIS RIGHT
                 (deep breath)
               I am...  ALL THE JEDI yes that's it.

IAN MCDIARMID MELTS and goes KABLOOEY!!  DAISY collapses, seemingly
DEAD...  but ADAM climbs out of the 10,000-foot-deep HOLE and rushes
over, and FORCE-HEALS her!  They SMOOCH!  Then ADAM collapses, having
spent his OWN life force!

                              ADAM DRIVER
               Now I'm gonna vanish into thin air or
               we'll be going back and forth at this all
               day.
                 (goes poof)

                              DAISY RIDLEY
               Shit, he rolled a natural 1 on the "how
               long will it take the Force-sensitive
               person to vanish after dying" table! 
               NNOOOO

Up above, our HEROES shoot all the PENISES off the STAR DESTROYERS, and
RICHARD E. GRANT is engulfed in an enormous FIREBALL so look for him to
be the SURPRISE BIG BAD of EPISODE XII.  Across the galaxy, the
remaining FINAL ORDER ships are blown up by legions of BUREAUCRATS and
TEDDY BEARS, and the good guys WIN!

EXT.  RESISTANCE PLANET

Everyone flies ALL THE WAY BACK TO HOME BASE to land and celebrate and
hug!  CHEWIE finally gets his fucking medal already!  TWO WOMEN KISS in
a scene easily cut out for certain foreign markets!  DAISY and JOHN and
OSCAR and KELLY MARIE hug!  RIAN JOHNSON sucks back a bottle of
hooch and shakes his head!

EXT.  TATTOOINE

DAISY returns to MARK HAMILL'S FARM and buries MARK AND CARRIE'S
LIGHTSABRES deep in the dirt before lighting up her OWN BRAND NEW
LIGHTSABRE because it's NEVER TOO LATE to introduce a new ACCESSORY. 
Nearby, the ghosts of CARRIE and MARK look on smiling, having apparently
gotten over the death of CARRIE'S SON.

                          GHOST CARRIE FISHER
               Well Adam died a hero, like Anakin did, so
               I'm sure his Force ghost will be showing
               up any moment now...
                 (looks around)

                            RANDOM OLD WOMAN
                          WANDERING THROUGH A
                           DESOLATE ABANDONED
                                  FARM
                 (to Daisy)
               Who are you?

                              DAISY RIDLEY
                 (smiles)
               I'm Rey.  Rey...  IRON MAN!
                 (grins widely)
                 (frowns)
                 (slaps forehead)
               FUCK

CREDITS

                              JOHN BOYEGA
               Um, so...  does my character get a last
               name too?  Or at least when do I finally
               get to tell Daisy that

END

GORHAM, N.H. — Sen. Amy Klobuchar recognizes that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are going to clean up here. But she sees a path to success by finding voters to whom they have little appeal — like those who are so independent-minded they voted for both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

It shows in every piece of her strategy, from the towns she visits to her stump speech. And in a state where the biggest voting bloc, 43 percent, is independents, it’s a game plan her campaign thinks will create an Election Day surprise.

Klobuchar’s state director said they’re focused on places other candidates have avoided, especially the towns that went to Obama in 2008 and 2012, but then voted for Trump in 2016.

“Those are really a lot of communities that tend to be bellwethers or communities that have an impact on New Hampshire outcomes,” said Scott Merrick. “Whether they're Democrats and they'll vote for more moderate candidates or they're truly undeclared voters who mix it up.”

Klobuchar spent hours in one of those cities, Claremont, on Tuesday delivering her stump speech and taking questions in a standing-room-only hall filled with over 300 people.

It’s one of the poorest cities in the state, struggling for decades to fund its public schools and attract new business. Just outside the venue sat a home crumbling under the wet snow, with its windows boarded up and saplings pushing out from between the peeling wooden siding.

Obama won Claremont with more than 60 percent of the vote in both 2008 and 2012. In 2016, Trump narrowly flipped it away from Democrats with 51 percent.

But University of New Hampshire pollster Andy Smith said “Obama-Trump” voters only represent around three percent of the electorate and questioned whether there are enough of them who vote in the Democratic primary to make a difference.

“A small percentage of the New Hampshire electorate voted for Obama in 2012 and for Trump in 2016, but they will not have much impact in the primary,” he said.

For that reason, the Klobuchar campaign is also targeting traditionally Republican towns that have been essentially ignored by other campaigns. One example is Wolfeboro, where opulent mansions like Mitt Romney’s $10 million, seven-bedroom summer home with a private boathouse overlook Lake Winnipesaukee. On Sunday, 200 people attended her town hall there.

Klobuchar’s most recent debate performance has made a difference — particularly the ensuing spike in fundraising. The campaign said they are diverting resources to New Hampshire out of the $1 million Klobuchar raised following her well-received debate performance in December though they declined to disclose how much.

Some of the money is being used to double their field staff, from 10 to 20 organizers, and up their advertising budget for January. The campaign’s advertising spending in the Boston media market dropped significantly from more than $500,000 in October to just $20,000 in November and $50,000 in December, according to Advertising Analytics, a tracking firm. They plan to launch a television ad here next week.

Still, even doubling the size of her staff footprint on the ground doesn’t land Klobuchar anywhere near the presence of the top-tier campaigns, some of which have nearly a hundred organizers to knock on doors and make phone calls.

A dozen Democrats and political watchers, including supporters, said a third-place finish here would be a huge victory. They largely agree she is seeing a surge, leading to a renewed interest from voters to attend a town hall, but wonder if it will be enough to vault her from the back of the pack.

With 40 days to go before the first primary in the nation, it would take a massive investment for Klobuchar’s campaign operation here to match the size of better funded campaigns.

“It’s a crowded field and at least five other campaigns have built a stronger ground game — spending months organizing and recruiting volunteers for the final push,” said a senior Democratic campaign operative.

Smith questioned whether the data from polls backed up the recent attention Klobuchar has been getting.

“The media wants something that is new and different, and I think that’s really what is happening with her,” he said. “Other than a little bit of a boost in poll numbers, she hasn’t raised a lot of money, she hasn’t been getting a lot of endorsements, but she’s been getting more news coverage though.”

In the last three polls here — all of which were in the field prior to the Dec. 19 debate — Klobuchar has averaged two percent.

“If you just don’t have the campaign resources that others have, you have to really count on catching fire at the end because you haven’t had an opportunity to build out your campaign operation,” Smith said. “They have a bad hand of cards that they’re playing, and they’re trying to play them as best as they can.”

In an interview with POLITICO, Klobuchar said she thinks her ability to win rural, independent voters in her home state of Minnesota translates to New Hampshire.

“These are the things I don't think people would understand that are my secret sauce for why I could do very well here,” she said, adding that she could rise in the polls if more people heard her speak. “I think not everyone knows who I am, and that would be a big miss for me.”

That style is as familiar and easy to digest as her favorite lunchtime meal: a baked potato. As she spread butter on one during a break in her three-day campaign swing here, she offered up how she may be a sort of comfort food for voters. She said she is closest in style and substance to the state’s top elected Democrats and her policies are most appealing to moderate voters, including independents who may have voted for Trump.

“That’s fair as long as you add chives,” said former state Rep. Jay Phinizy, an early Klobuchar supporter. “What’s impractical about most of the people is that they talk about all these wonderful concepts — not trying to denigrate them — but in the process, no one else has offered a practical application of how to get stuff done. She has experience doing that in the Senate.”

In a single day on the trail, Klobuchar invoked the names of the state’s popular senators, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, more than twenty times. She’s become so close to Hassan they play the New York Times mini-crossword puzzle every day to see who can finish the fastest. (Hassan holds the lead at 11 seconds. “Everything just clicked,” Hassan said in a text message to Klobuchar.)

“I think that people are not always focused on how similar my approach and voting record is to the two senators here,” Klobuchar said. She said the three of them may not be the loudest in the Senate but know how to quietly work the levers to get bills passed.

“Maggie and Jeannie and I are always in the bipartisan groups,” she said.

In style and substance, she matches Shaheen and Hassan on the stump more than the other senators in the race. All three generally avoid rah-rah rhetoric in their speeches, instead focusing on calmly highlighting what they’ve accomplished in Congress. None of them support versions of Medicare for All or free college for all being offered up the more liberal wing of the party.

Klobuchar doesn’t mention that detail in her stump speech but is happy to riff about how plans proposed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders won’t work if a voter asks.

Her supporters hope she’s seeing a wave and not a peak.

“She’s slow and steady and I think it’s going to be building up to Iowa and New Hampshire,” said former state Attorney General Joe Foster, who saw 14 candidates before deciding on Klobuchar. “She’s getting attention at just the right time.”

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

It seems 207 members of Congress, including 39 Republican senators, have filed an amicus brief asking that the Supreme Court revisit and potentially end abortion rights, including Roe v. Wade. That’s not hyperbole. In specific, the lawmakers claim an “unworkability” of the “right to abortion” found in Roe v. Wade. The brief:

[...] respectfully suggest[s] that the Fifth Circuit’s struggle to define the appropriate “large fraction” or determine what “burden” on abortion access is “undue” illustrates the unworkability of the “right to abortion” found in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and the need for the Court to again take up the issue of whether Roe and Casey should be reconsidered and, if appropriate, overruled.

That Republican lawmakers would ask the Supreme Court to undo the key decision establishing abortion as legal and ejecting, albeit not very well, theocrats and misogynists from the decision-making is not surprising. Republican lawmakers have defended and enabled the corruption of the Trump presidency precisely because stocking the court with justices who would do so was considered more consequential than any law breaking.

But the brief asks that Roe v. Wade contains a Democratic name, as well. Illinois Rep. Daniel Lipinski, a staunch abortion foe no matter what those in his own district desire, also signed the request. His name appears alongside those of Republican brothers such as Rep. Steve King, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, and Rep. Mark Meadows.

To unseat Lipinski and be rid of this conservative "Democrat" once and for all, please donate to his Democratic primary challenger, Marie Newman.

Unredacted versions of White House memos, obtained by the website Just Security, confirm that the decision to withhold U.S. military assistance from Ukraine came straight from Donald Trump. Those memos show rapidly escalating concern from officials at both the White House and the Pentagon who saw that Trump’s actions in delaying the release of the aide were both illegal and likely to generate a political firestorm. And they demonstrate that by the time Trump called the Ukrainian president, officials at the Office of Management and Budget were actively engaged in disguising the truth and conspiring to deceive both Congress and the public.

While Republicans continue to object that the impeachment of Donald Trump was only based on his misusing his office to extort political favors from an ally and doesn’t cover any “crimes,” emails that emerged over the holidays showed that not only was delaying the military assistance to Ukraine a criminal act, but also that almost everyone in the White House knew it. The emails, produced just before Christmas in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the Center for Public Integrity, showed a mad scramble in the White House to defend something that was “flatly illegal.” That effort eventually generated a truly extraordinary collaboration among lawyers at the White House, the OMB, and the Department of Justice to develop a theory that Trump really was above the law, and that, as The New York Times wrote, Trump’s “role as commander in chief would simply allow him to override Congress on the issue.” New evidence shows that it also generated an effort inside the OMB to redefine the term “apportionment” to include shifting funds to an unknown date in the future … otherwise known as a delay.

The clear knowledge that Trump’s 84-day delay was strictly against the law explains why, back in mid-December, the White House issued a memo blaming the OMB for the delay. That memo claimed that the whole delay in sending assistance was a “programmatic” one generated not by Trump, but by OMB leaders who took it on themselves to conduct a review of the assistance. That was the claim. But the truth revealed by the emails is that the OMB officials weren’t the source of the delays. The order came straight from Trump, and the OMB was left frantically searching for an excuse for something that they knew was a violation of the Impoundment Control Act.

Testimony from Defense Department official Laura Cooper confirmed that the DOD completed the legislatively required review of the Ukraine assistance on May 23. That review confirmed that Ukraine had met its obligations in both fighting corruption and upholding democracy. The DOD’s go-ahead on the assistance was then sent to Congress and to the White House. On June 18, the Pentagon issued a public announcement that it would release $250 million of the funds. But just one day later, a senior adviser to White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney notified the acting head of the OMB to hold the assistance. Right from the start, they made clear that they were acting at the direction of Trump.

The conflict between the information in the emails and the information still being released from the White House shows that Trump engaged in a cover-up of actions leading to his impeachment and that a number of OMB officials knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to hide, mislabel, and cover up an illegal action.

The legal memo released by the White House on Dec. 11 indicated that the OMB had placed a “footnote” on the funds approved by the DOD, and that “The action of adding the footnote to the apportionment made approximately $214 million in unobligated USAI funds legally unavailable for obligation.” That memo then also takes a superbly nonsensical swing at claiming that what the OMB was doing in delaying assistance to Ukraine wasn’t really a delay at all; instead, it was just changing the “apportionment” of the funds by holding them up so that they were received later, which is somehow not a delay, because “OMB's exercise of its statutory authority ... to apportion funds to ensure that they are spent in accordance with statutory directives and last for the period of availability is different than a ‘deferral’ under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA),which requires that a President not ‘defer funds without prior notice to Congress.’”

That would be a terrific theory, except that it’s nonsense on every front. The apportionment authority of the OMB is restricted to how aid is paid out over the stipulated period. It does not have the authority to define the start of that period. More importantly, the theory required that the delay originate from the OMB. It didn’t. And required that someone at the OMB invoke concerns about apportionment when initiating the delay. They didn’t. And suggested that the action wasn’t seen by everyone involved as a delay. It was.

In fact, the people at the OMB immediately recognized that what was going on was a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. It wasn’t until after Donald Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 that OMB official Michael Duffey planted the seeds for the apportionment excuse in a memo to senior defense officials. In that memo, Duffey instructed the DOD officials to “hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds” and informed the Pentagon that they would “formalize the pause with an apportionment footnote to be provided later today.”

Five weeks after the hold was actually ordered by Trump, and 90 minutes after the infamously “perfect” call, the OMB finally drafted this nonsensical excuse for delaying the assistance. An excuse that was so obviously laughable that Duffey's next sentence to those Pentagon officials was, “Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction.”

The new emails make clear that officials at the OMB were covering for Trump, and that they knew it. As late as Aug. 30, Duffey sent an email saying that he had “Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.” That they are defending that as an “apportionment” issue shows that Duffey and others at the OMB are not just not involved in a cover-up of Trump’s actions, but were aware of and participated in illegal acts. That is a conspiracy against the United States in its purest and least defensible form.

Duffey is one of the four witnesses Chuck Schumer has sought for the Senate impeachment trial. One thing that’s not a secret: Why Mitch McConnell doesn’t want Duffey to testify.

Partial Timeline of UKraine and the OMB

May 23—The Department of Defense notifies Congress that its review of the assistance is complete and that it is ready to move forward. 

June 18—DOD makes a public announcement of its intention to release the first $250 million of the assistance.

June 19—Trump instructs that the assistance be withheld. OMB official contacts the DOD and tells it to hold up the assistance. Officials immediately concerned about no defining legal authority and no notification to Congress.

July 25—Trump calls Zelensky. Ninety minutes after the call, Duffey emails Defense officials to warn them not to go forward with assistance, tells them that he will be providing a “footnote” to claim apportionment, and warns them to stay silent. DOD officials note that Ukraine asks about delay on same day.

Aug. 30—Duffey informs Pentagon comptroller that there is “Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”

Oct. 17—Acting White House chief of staff and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney appears at a press conference and, in response to questions about a “quid pro quo” in Ukraine, responds by saying, “We do that all the time. Did he also mention to me the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about it. But that’s it. That’s why we held up the money … I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

Dec. 11—OMB general counsel Mark Paoletta issues a letter to the General Accountability Office attorney indicating that the hold originated within the OMB and was because of apportionment.

Every year that the federal minimum wage stays at $7.25 an hour, I think this will be the year when movement in the states and cities dries up. And 2019 was not that year. The federal minimum wage has made history, going the longest without an increase since 1938, the year the law was created. Now that it’s controlled by Democrats, the House of Representatives tried to do something about it, passing a $15 minimum wage bill—but the Republican-controlled Senate won’t even hold a vote on it and Donald Trump wouldn’t sign it.

This year brought more reminders of how important it is to raise the minimum wage, with a major study of more than 130 minimum wage increases finding, in short, that the main Republican talking point is false: raising the minimum wage does not kill jobs. Does not. The slew of recent state increases has also failed to produce the dire effects predicted by Republicans. Other studies have found that a higher minimum wage improves quality of life in a range of ways, even reducing suicides and lowering recidivism among recently released prisoners. So there’s no real excuse for Senate Republicans and Trump to stand in the way—but when have they ever needed an excuse other than sheer hatred of low-income people?

New Jersey passed a $15 minimum wage law, with most workers to reach that level in 2024. It will then be adjusted for inflation annually. Tipped workers won’t get much of a raise, going from $2.13 an hour to $5.13, and farm workers will only get to $12.50 in 2024. But it’s progress the state could only get by replacing Chris Christie with Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, and it’s real progress: Pay for most workers rose from $8.85 to $10 an hour in July and will go to $11 on January 1, 2020. The state is the third-largest to pass a $15 minimum.

Illinois came next—with a bill that moves even more slowly, getting to $15 in 2025. Workers there will get their first raise on January 1, going from $8.25 to $9.25, then to $10 on July 1 and rising by $1 every January 1. The tipped minimum wage will be 60% of the total. Chicago and Cook County already have significantly higher minimum wages—and Chicago recently put itself on the path to $15 in 2021—but for the rest of the state, this is another of those steps forward you get when a Democratic governor replaces a Republican one.

Maryland still has a Republican governor, but its Democratic legislature overrode his veto to become the third state to pass a $15 minimum wage law in 2019 alone. Maryland’s law won’t be fully in effect until 2026, when workers in establishments with fewer than 15 employees will get there, and tipped workers, once again, will be left behind. Still. Republican governor. The law will give 573,000 workers a raise, according to the National Employment Law Project.

New Mexico only raised its minimum wage to $12, which it will reach in 2023. Workers will get their first raise, from $7.50 to $9, with the coming of the new year. The tipped minimum wage will rise a truly pathetic amount, from $2.13 to $3. The state’s previous Republican governor vetoed minimum wage increases to even $9, while current Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham campaigned on $12.

Connecticut had a $10.10 minimum wage, but it’s raising it to $15, giving more than 330,000 workers a raise. The state’s tipped minimum wage won't go up to the full amount, but is currently at $6.38 and lawmakers have debated legislation to improve the situation for these workers. The minimum wage went up to $11 on October 1 and will rise $1 a year until it hits $15 in 2023.

Nevada only raised its minimum wage to $12 an hour, $11 for employers that offer insurance, and it won’t get there until 2024. But hey, that makes six states to raise their minimum wages in 2019, and that’s 300,000 Nevada workers getting a raise (eventually).

Denver, Colorado, is raising its minimum wage from $11.10 now to $15.87 in 2022, at which point it will be indexed to inflation. That change came through a unanimous city council vote.

As always, credit for all of these minimum wage increases goes to the low-wage workers who started this fight, insisting that the $9 or even $10.10 being proposed by Democratic lawmakers was not enough.

Mitch McConnell is still refusing to describe how the Senate trial on the impeachment of Donald Trump will be structured. However, The New York Times reports that the Republican leader is clear on one point: no witnesses allowed. 

In just the few days since Trump was impeached in the House, additional evidence has appeared concerning his monthslong attempt to extort Ukraine into manufacturing dirt for use against one of his potential opponents in the 2020 election, Vice President Joe Biden. That includes emails showing that Trump blocked military assistance to Ukraine just minutes after his phone call with the Ukrainian president; Office of Management and Budget officials admitting that Trump’s action was illegal; and White House attorneys cooking up a theory that it was all just fine because Trump is genuinely above the law. This new information, and the fact that Trump blocked the most critical witnesses from appearing before the House, are really good reasons that there should be witnesses at Trump’s Senate trial.

But according to the Times, McConnell is nixing any possibility of witnesses, and has warned other Republicans that allowing any witnesses to speak would provide “an opening for uncertainty during the trial.” 

It’s worth taking a moment to understand what McConnell means by this. If there’s anything that can be said about the trial at the moment, it’s that everything about it is uncertain. There’s no information about its length, about the rules under such it will be conducted, or about any other aspect of it. McConnell has even floated the idea of bringing in some of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the House as kind of special advisers to the Senate, which would be a genuinely unsettling action.

But when McConnell says he’s worried about “an opening for uncertainty,” what he really means is that someone might say something. If they actually had Mick Mulvaney there to confess that the OMB knew that placing a hold on the assistance was illegal, or had Bolton there to talk about the actual harm done by Trump’s actions, or had Rudy Giuliani spilling his guts about smearing an ambassador for the benefit of “his client”—if the Senate heard any of those things, it might have to listen.

Of course, it remains unlikely that enough Republicans would vote for removal to threaten Trump, even if Giuliani showed up to confess actual murder. But any witnesses, and perhaps especially those OMB officials who scrambled to enforce Trump’s 84-day delay, while simultaneously admitting that they knew it was wrong, might be enough not only to peel away some Republicans up for reelection, but also to threaten others on the bubble. Like, say, Mitch McConnell.

McConnell is flat-out saying that he can’t allow witnesses because witnesses might give evidence that Trump can’t withstand. Which is pretty good evidence all on its own.

Lev Parnas, who coordinated with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on his Ukraine scheme, is making a play to share evidence uncovered by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with congressional impeachment investigators. Parnas is currently charged with violating campaign finance law and he is seeking permission to forward information made available to him by the Justice Department after the FBI seized certain materials from his home, including documents and an iPhone. Those materials, which Congress had subpoenaed from Parnas in October, are currently under protective order by the court as part of the ongoing investigation into the alleged conspiracy to illegally funnel foreign money to U.S. campaigns.

The information gleaned from the contents, however, could prove relevant to Democrats' impeachment investigation, since Parnas was in frequent contact with Giuliani about Ukraine, among other matters.

“Review of these materials is essential to the Committee’s ability to corroborate the strength of Mr. Parnas’ potential testimony,” Parnas attorney Joseph Bondy wrote to the court in a letter filed Monday night. Bondy also said the government had no objection to Parnas producing the information for Congress, subject to court approval.

Just another potential bombshell hanging over Trumpworld. No one knows exactly what the next big revelation will be or when it will come to further implicate Trump and/or his bestie Rudy G in wrongdoing. But there are simply too many loose ends for that revelation not to drop in the next several months. 

The Trump administration is dialing back a sweeping ban on flavored vaping products the president promised three months ago, following strenuous lobbying from his political allies and the vaping industry.

Federal rules expected to be released soon — more than three months after President Donald Trump promised a crackdown on vaping amid a pair of related public health crises — include new carveouts that will allow some products to remain on the market. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

The Food and Drug Administration will ban major retailers, gas stations and convenience stores from selling all fruit- and sweet-flavored vapes, which have been blamed for the sharp rise in teen use. However, in a major reversal, the agency will allow menthol-flavored e-cigarettes to be widely available, and open tank vapes commonly sold in vape shops will also be excluded from the ban, an HHS official confirms.

The decision is a win for some of Trump's conservative allies, who warned a more sweeping ban on flavored vaping products would alienate the president's base and weaken his reelection effort. However, the carveouts have angered public health groups.

"It is a capitulation to both Juul and vape shops and gives a green light to the e-cigarette industry to continue to target and addict kids with flavored products," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free-Kids, in a statement Tuesday.

The issue appeared to put Trump's top health advisers at odds with his re-election campaign and free-market outside groups. Campaign manager Brad Parscale urged the president to back off of a sweeping ban over concerns it could trigger backlash among his own supporters. That also put the campaign at odds with first lady Melania Trump, who the president identified as driving force behind the more muscular ban he initially proposed.

Trump unexpectedly announced a plan for broad flavor bans in September, citing widespread teen vaping and concerns over the ongoing outbreak of vaping-linked lung illnesses. More than 50 people have been killed and more than 2,500 sickened by the illnesses, which have mostly been linked to marijuana vapes from the black market.

"Children have died, people have died," Trump said at the time, citing Melania's concerns as the parent of a teenager. “And we’re going to have some very strong rules and regulations.”

The administration in September said it would ban menthol and mint vaping products, citing the popularity of those flavors among teens — 64 percent of of high school vapers reported using those flavors, according to early figures from this year's National Youth Tobacco Survey.

The pressure campaign to water down the ban came quickly after that initial announcement. And within days, Trump softened his rhetoric on vaping, highlighting its potential for helping adults quit smoking.

"While I like the Vaping alternative to Cigarettes, we need to make sure this alternative is SAFE for ALL!" Trump tweeted. "Let’s get counterfeits off the market, and keep young children from Vaping!"

By early November, the sweeping flavor ban dead. The only question was whether the administration would offer a watered down version or move on from the issue.

HHS and FDA declined to comment Tuesday evening.

The decision to ban mint while allowing menthol vapes could be seen as a compromise while traditional menthol cigarettes, considered much more harmful, are widely sold. In earlier proposals, the FDA would have exempted menthol e-cigarette products from regulation until menthol cigarettes were banned. The agency in March 2018 proposed a ban on menthol cigarettes but hasn't advanced the proposal.

Juul, the leading e-cigarette maker, recently pulled its sweet and mint flavors off the market amid a broader shift in company strategy following months of negative headlines. Juul, which continues to sell menthol vapes, said it would not lobby the administration on the flavor ban.

Juul and bigger vaping companies have said they could manage a flavor ban, but smaller industry players and retailers predicted it would crush them. Trump acknowledged this concern in recent weeks, saying that his administration's vaping efforts would account for the potential impact on jobs.

Thousands of small e-cigarette manufacturers and vape shops have warned that sweeping flavor bans would shutter an industry that's grown rapidly in recent years. Free-market groups have warned that the impact could ripple into Trump's 2020 campaign efforts.

One of those groups, Americans for Tax Reform, provided polling data to the White House and Trump campaign that showed flavor bans would hurt the president "in every battleground state."

"Trump wants to win next year," said Paul Blair, the group's director of strategic initiatives. "He knows that killing 10,000 small businesses and putting 100,000 people out of work for Christmas would be a pretty bad way to begin the 2020 campaign in earnest."

Flavored e-cigarettes covered by the ban must be removed from stores without age restrictions, like gas stations and retail chains, within 30 days, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in September. Companies hoping to sell those products again would have to prove to the FDA that their products don't harm public health.

Trump's slimmed-down e-cigarette regulation will likely loom large in the initial months of new FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn's tenure. The longtime cancer researcher was confirmed this month after senators grilled him on vaping regulation during a committee hearing.

Lawmakers largely hailed the flavored vaping ban when Trump first announced it in September, but Democrats for weeks have been pushing the administration to formalize sweeping restrictions. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, in particular has criticized the administration for reacting too slowly to rising teen vaping rates and sparred with the previous acting FDA head over the issue.

Public health groups were outraged when reports began circulating in October that the administration was considering whether to exempt mint and menthol. They said the new rules won't do enough to discourage teen use.

"It’s a compromise that removes the product that most Juul users are using today — but just as when mango [flavor] became less available, it opens the door to what they will use tomorrow," said Myers.

Skeptics warn that e-cigarette makers could try to blur the line between mint and menthol flavors in a way that could still attract teen users. Many public health groups say mint is far more popular than menthol among teens, but most surveys make it difficult to determine flavor preferences. One of the rare studies to do so, which was published in a major medical journal in November, indicates teens vastly prefer mint Juul pods to menthol ones.

However, critics worry about providing any leeway on flavored products. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, a Juul critic, this fall expressed concern that e-cigarette makers would try to game a ban just on mint vapes.

"The challenge with the policy of carving out menthol is Juul is likely to rename their mint [to] menthol," Gottlieb said. "There is probably not much FDA can do when a company renames a flavor."

Critics such as Myers question whether limiting flavored sales to vape shops will actually curb teen use. The FDA earlier this year noted that 14.8 percent of teens reported getting e-cigarettes in vape shops in the past month, compared to just 8.4 percent who said they bought the products in a gas station or convenience store.

"There is no rationale for exempting vape shops if the concern is sales to kids," Myers said.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

WWE wrestler Lars Sullivan deleted his Twitter account this week after internet sleuths on Reddit discovered that he had once done gay adult films under the name Mitch Bennett.

At issue was the fact that Sullivan was fined $100,000 this year after backlash over comments that he had once made on a forum at Bodybuilding.com, some of which were called homophobic. The others were abusive and racist, according to Ringside News, which characterized Sullivan as an “internet troll.”

They included comments about the NFL quarterback Philip Rivers, like this one: “Philip Rivers = Crybaby b*tch and is extremely gay. Most of California, especially sothern cal, is gay. Fits well. Hell ‘Philip’ is a gay name in itself!@”

Wrote Ringside News: “If you find what Sullivan wrote offensive we apologize, but this is just another thing he said on those boards that he might have needed to think about twice before hitting the send key. It should also be noted that he was banned from this board eventually, but he really spent a lot of time on there.”

In May, Sullivan apologized for the remarks: “There is no excuse for the inappropriate remarks that I made years ago. They do not reflect my personal beliefs nor who I am today, and I apologize to anyone I offended.”

So Reddit blew up after making the discovery that “Mitch Bennett” was really Lars Sullivan, which was confirmed when they spied a “DM” tattoo on the young adult film actor’s shoulder. Sullivan’s real name is Dylan Miley.

According to Ringside News, Sullivan did both couple and solo scenes.

WWE is Lars Sullivan territory

Pornhub: *clears throat* "THIS IS LARS SULLIVAN TERRITORY! pic.twitter.com/UkeTn89Dpc

— Fiending for Followers (@Fiend4Follows) December 29, 2019

To see more from this video, click here. And well, some simple searches can take you to the full scene.

Sullivan is currently recovering from a knee injury.

The post ‘Homophobic’ WWE Wrestler Lars Sullivan Discovered to Be Former Gay Adult Film Actor appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

If there was anything Republicans were anxious to prove in their last-ditch semi-defense of Donald Trump during the closing moments of the House impeachment hearings, it was that No Ukrainians Were Harmed In Making This Film. That is, that Trump’s decision to delay forwarding military assistance to Ukraine by 84 days (or by 50, or 55, or 60, as various Republicans claimed) had not actually resulted in anyone dying. This was, America was reminded by an exceedingly huffy Rep. Doug Collins, not a decision that put anyone at risk.

Except for the way it put everyone in Ukraine at risk. And the way it signaled to Vladimir Putin that he had a green light to carry on with his plans to dismantle Europe, rebuild the Soviet Union, and destroy that pesky idea of liberal democracy.

As NBC News reports, Ukraine’s five-year effort to hold back invading Russian forces has cost the lives of 13,000 people and left nearly 430,000 children displaced, orphaned, or otherwise traumatized. Meanwhile, the ever-shifting border has left 2 million people ringed-in by land mines and military forces. Against that backdrop, any sign that support from the United States is weakening is seen not as a temporary delay, but as an existential threat.

By making it clear that U.S. assistance was predicated on Ukraine’s willingness to jump through political hoops and announce decidedly partisan support for Trump, bipartisan support for Ukraine has been placed in genuine risk. As NBC notes, Trump has “exposed the cracks in the West’s response to an emboldened Russia, inflicted permanent damage on Ukraine and heightened the risk of Moscow extending its influence in the country.”

The major factor that’s keeping Russian tanks from rolling into Kyiv is not Ukrainian forces on the ground in the Donbass; it’s the impression that behind those Ukrainian forces is an American commitment to expanding democracy. And it’s that basic assumption that Trump not only delayed—he destroyed it.

Republicans have been quick to criticize Democratic leaders in the House for daring to point out Trump’s efforts to extort action from Ukraine. They’ve repeatedly pointed out that Ukrainian officials, literally under the gun from the Russian side of the border, refuse to complain about Trump’s actions. Not, of course, because making such a complaint would immediately have the entire Republican Party waving starter flags for Russian heavy armor brigades, but just because they … No. Wait. It’s the tank thing.

From the moment Trump dispatched Rudy Giuliani to begin Operation Suborn Perjury, he didn’t just put Ukraine at risk—he also inflicted permanent damage on Ukraine, on the United States, and on the greater effort to defend democracy against authoritarian rule.

Rep. Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, shocked a lot of politics watchers last week when he announced his retirement, seemingly out of the blue and just one day before the deadline for candidates for the House of Representatives to file. The Freedom Caucus maniac is expected to find some role in Donald Trump's White House, which is fitting, but he's leaving behind a lot of disgruntled North Carolina Republicans.

It seems his last-minute announcement wasn't the result of soul-searching and agonizing about leaving office. Sources in North Carolina tell Politico that it seems to be more about boxing out candidates to replace him, making way for a friend of his wife's, who launched her campaign just hours after his announcement. Lynda Bennett, a real estate agent and Republican activist, is close friends with Debbie Meadows, and had her website and Facebook page at the ready, published within hours of Meadows' retirement announcement.

What's more, according to Politico's digging, Bennett's campaign website was registered back in October by Scott Meadows, who seems to be Mark Meadows' brother. Her campaign’s Facebook page appeared the day before the announcement, and just hours before it, she posted pictures of herself with the congressman and his wife at a local Republican event. Making it even more stinky, she received an immediate endorsement from Meadows' old buddies, the Asheville Tea PAC, which said that it convened a special early-morning call on the day of his announcement—very early, 6:15—to make its endorsement decision.

One former candidate for the seat, Jeff Miller, a city councilman in Hendersonville, is not happy. "It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this happened. It just doesn't," he told Politico. "It just looks very suspicious. […] It was very discourteous to other Republicans who were respecting Congressman Meadows and not primarying him for him to pull out this close to it and leave everybody in a lurch," he said. Another local Republican official, Aubrey Woodard, told Politico that "my phone has been ringing off the hook from people who are upset and discouraged," and that the move has raised "great suspicion" among Republicans in the district.

It's also very undemocratic, small d, which the tea party movement was supposedly all about. Of course Meadows put his thumb on the scale for his preferred candidate. Because whatever auspices he went to Congress under—that supposed grassroots anti-establishment tea party ethos—he's a fraud like every other Republican.

After repeatedly attacking his predecessor for golfing too much, Donald Trump has racked up more than $118 million in golfing fees on the taxpayers' dime, according to HuffPost. 

Over the holiday, Trump made his 26th visit to Mar-a-Lago, where a portion of the taxpayer dollars used to fund his golf habit ultimately ends up in his very own pocket—likely to the tune of several million dollars.

Just to be clear, Trump has far out-golfed Obama, who at this point in his first term had hit the links some 88 days. In the past couple weeks, Trump logged his 227th day at the golf course. Additionally, Obama never turned a profit from golfing, while Trump has been double dipping all along—letting taxpayers both foot the bill and line his pockets.

They say there’s a Trump tweet for every occasion. In this case, there are 27.

Thousands of students, supporters, and invited guests sing songs of Christian praise before then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took the stage in January 2016 at Liberty University, whose founder Jerry Falwell was a prominent evangelical leader. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

It’s his immigration policy.

Why are white evangelicals so devoted to President Trump?

It’s a question that has preoccupied many academics and political observers — and a Christmas Day exchange between Pete Buttigieg and a Christian right blogger shed some light on one answer.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, tweeted that Jesus Christ “came into this world ... not as a citizen, but as a refugee.” In response to that Christmas message, religious right blogger Matt Walsh tweeted that “Joseph and Mary went to their ancestral home in Bethlehem for a census. In no sense did Jesus ‘come into this world as a refugee.’”

That pushback caught the attention of Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan P. Burge. The question of Jesus’s immigration status is still a subject of debate among Christians. But Walsh’s forceful response did underscore something for Burge that he wanted to dive deeper into: the fact that “white evangelicals (like Matt Walsh) are incredibly conservative on immigration.”

In a post probing the issue on the site Religion in Public, Burge used data from a 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which asked about 60,000 participants a host of questions on a range of issues.

On immigration, respondents were asked five different questions: whether they supported withholding federal funds from sanctuary states and cities; increasing border funding by $25 billion; detaining those who cross the border without authorization multiple times; ending a visa lottery program and family-based immigration, both of which have been the subject of President Donald Trump’s ire; and rolling back the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has offered deportation protection and work permits to over 700,000 young unauthorized immigrants since 2012.

Burge’s analysis, published Thursday, finds that on issues ranging from border security to immigration detention, white evangelicals — a group that includes dozens of individual denominations, from the Southern Baptist Convention to the Pentecostal movement — are substantially more conservative than the average American and even the next most conservative religious group.

He calculated the share of white evangelicals who supported the policies, the share of the next most conservative religious group who supported the policies, and the share of all respondents who supported the policies.

Evangelicals were consistently the most conservative by a wide margin.

Courtesy of Ryan Burge

On four of the five policies, evangelicals were at least 20 percent more conservative compared to the average American. The divide is smaller but still significant when compared to the next most conservative religious group: on three of the policies, there’s a gap of 10 percent, but on the rest, it’s 5 percent at least.

It suggests that evangelical support for Trump continues to remain high largely because they like the policy outcomes of the Trump era — particularly on immigration.

Trump is betting that evangelicals will maintain their hardline views on immigration

Burge’s findings are in line with prior polling on evangelicals’ positions on immigration issues. An October PRRI survey of more than 2,000 voters found that Republican white evangelical Protestants were 75 percent more likely than all Republicans to assert that “immigrants are invading American society.”

A Washington Post/ABC poll from January 2018 determined that three-quarters of white evangelicals nationwide favored the Trump administration’s “crackdown on undocumented immigrants” compared to 46 percent of all Americans. And a Pew Research Center poll in May 2018 found that 68 percent of white evangelicals think America is not obligated to resettle refugees — 25 percent more than the national average.

Evangelicals’ attitudes toward immigrants don’t seem to have much basis in religious scripture, as Tara Isabella Burton wrote for Vox:

The Bible contains numerous passages that seem to straightforwardly exhort care for the poor, immigrants, and refugees. Isaiah 10, for example, sees God excoriating those who “turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right.” In Matthew 25 (which a Methodist pastor quoted to Jeff Sessions Monday while protesting his speech), Jesus warns his followers that those who withhold care from the poor or the refugee — “the least of these” — are seen as having done it to Jesus himself. Plenty of other verses — Leviticus 19:33–34, Jeremiah 7:5–7, Ezekiel 47:22, Zechariah 7:9–10 — express similar sentiments.

But since at least the 1970s, American evangelicals have generally been reluctant to count immigrants among those the Bible calls on them to aid. Trump has further fueled that reluctance, Burton adds:

[T]he age of Trump — and the Christian nationalism he has frequently evoked as a rhetorical campaign strategy — has seen white evangelical nativist rhetoric take on a more politicized role. As Messiah College professor and historian John Fea told Vox, white evangelical pastors — and thus their parishioners — are increasingly willing to take their sermon talking points and “marching orders” from an administration buoyed, in part, by its embrace of nativism.

Some evangelicals have pushed back against the hardline turn immigration policy has taken under Trump. Most recently, Christianity Today, a prominent evangelical magazine, criticized Trump’s “cruelty and hostility towards immigrants and refugees” (though as my colleague Jane Coaston notes, the magazine isn’t representative of the type of evangelicals who back Trump).

Evangelical leaders, including Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the prominent evangelist Rev. Billy Graham, also widely denounced the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant families in detention in the summer of 2018 (though in that instance Graham also noted his continuing enthusiasm for Trump).

But on the whole, the president’s views on immigration have drawn support from evangelicals, a key voting bloc that helped carry him to victory in battleground states in 2016. It’s a strategy that his campaign is hoping to replicate in 2020 and, so far, it appears to be working: Trump has a 75 percent approval rating among white evangelicals, compared to 42 percent among all Americans.

McCarthy and Trump embrace during a Rose Garden event in May 2017. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Republican leader used a sting of lies to mislead people into thinking the FBI had it out for Trump.

On Sunday afternoon, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy packed a string of explosive claims in a short tweet about the recently released Justice Department inspector general report about the Russia investigation. Every one of them is false.

McCarthy’s tweet serves as an especially stark illustration of how President Donald Trump and his allies are trying to mislead the public about Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in hopes of creating a perception that the FBI had it out for Trump from the very beginning.

There’s just one problem — Horowitz’s report actually says the opposite.

Investigators “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” that led to the investigation, the report says, adding that the agents who opened the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation had an “authorized purpose” to do so.

McCarthy’s tweet features a video clip of him claiming during a Fox News interview that the Russia investigation was tantamount to “a modern-day coup.” In text accompanying the clip, McCarthy wrote that “the FBI broke into President Trump’s campaign, spied on him, then tried to cover it up. ... This is a modern-day Watergate.”

But we’ve known for two years now that the Russia investigation began after then-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos bragged to an Australian diplomat about having inside knowledge that Russia was in possession of Clinton’s hacked emails — a claim the diplomat brought to the attention of the FBI in the summer of 2016 when the Democratic National Committee’s hacked emails were published by WikiLeaks.

The inspector general concluded that was sufficient basis for the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia. McCarthy’s tweet represents an especially brazen MAGA-world attempt to rewrite history.

It is not the case that the FBI “broke into” the Trump campaign

McCarthy’s claim that that FBI “broke into” the Trump campaign appears to refer to a conspiracy theory that has gained steam in Trumpworld about Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who Papadopoulos says approached him, claimed to be working for the Russian government, and offered the Trump campaign “dirt” on Clinton.

Trump defenders have claimed that Mifsud was actually working on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, and in that capacity set up the Trump campaign. But as my colleague Jen Kirby detailed earlier this month, the inspector general found no evidence to support this conspiracy theory:

Even the prosecutor personally selected by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the Russia probe couldn’t find evidence to back up right-wing conspiracy theories about the origins of the investigation.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Connecticut US Attorney John Durham, whom Barr tapped in May to examine the origins of the Russia inquiry, said he doesn’t have evidence to back up the allegation that the FBI planted an informant to “spy” on the Trump campaign.

He reportedly told that to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Justice Department’s independent watchdog, who is carrying out a separate investigation from Durham.

The actual report makes clear that FBI files “contain no evidence that Mifsud has ever acted as an FBI [confidential human source], and none of the witnesses we interviewed or documents we reviewed had any information to support such an allegation.”

“All of the witnesses we interviewed told the OIG that the FBI did not try to recruit members of the Trump campaign as [Confidential Human Sources], did not send CHSs to collect information in Trump campaign headquarters or Trump campaign spaces, and did not ask CHSs to join the Trump campaign or otherwise attend campaign related events as part of the investigation,” the report adds.

In short, there’s no evidence supporting McCarthy’s claim about the FBI infiltrating the Trump campaign. Even Durham, whose sole investigatory purpose seems to be to bolster Trump’s conspiracy theories, hasn’t been able to find any. But the House’s top-ranking Republican isn’t about to let facts get in the way of his narrative.

It’s also not the case that the FBI “spied on” Trump

McCarthy’s claim about how the FBI allegedly “spied on” the Trump campaign echoes a talking point that Trump himself has repeatedly used in recent years.

It sounds nefarious, but the report makes clear there’s no evidence to back it up. While the report does detail “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FISA warrant application the FBI used to surveil onetime Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, he was no longer associated with the campaign at the time the surveillance began, and Horowitz makes clear there’s no indication political motivations were afoot.

As Kirby explained in a post about the report’s key findings:

Horowitz concludes that the “FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or federal crime.”

The report acknowledges that the bar isn’t incredibly high to launch an investigation, but that the requirements were met. In multiple instances, Horowitz said he failed “to find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation” directed decisions when it came to opening the investigation or authorizing investigations into individuals associated with the campaign or in the wiretapping former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

The report also discredits the theory that the FBI used informants or undercover sources to “spy” on the Trump campaign prior to opening the investigation, and finds that the FBI did not rely on the Steele dossier — to open the investigation (though Horowitz did criticize the FBI’s decision-making when it came to its relationship Steele and how it presented his information).

McCarthy, however, has spent weeks pushing a talking point at odds with the inspector general’s findings.

In continuing to push the “spying” narrative even after the inspector general demolished it, McCarthy is taking cues from Attorney General Bill Barr, who claimed in a recent interview with NBC that “the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government used the apparatus of the state, principally the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.”

But Horowitz’s report makes clear that the Obama administration did no such thing.

“The Crossfire Hurricane team told us that the proposal for FISA coverage targeting Carter Page originated from the team, not an instruction from management,” with “management” alluding to Obama administration officials.

McCarthy and Trump are spitting in our faces and telling us it’s raining

Put succinctly, the inspector general report’s core conclusions are directly at odds with the four assertions in McCarthy’s tweet. There was no break-in. There was no “spying.” While the report does detail “serious performance failures” by low-level FBI officials, there was no cover-up, because there was nothing to cover up.

Law enforcement and intelligence community officials have made no serious efforts to conceal why the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia was opened in the first place or how it proceeded. The only apt comparison to Watergate would be in reference to the Trump campaign’s shady dealings with Russia, not the FBI’s conduct.

But Trump, Barr, and McCarthy don’t like the set of facts emerging from the inspector general’s report, so they’re worked hard to mislead people about it. Trump, for instance, initially responded to the report by claiming it showed “an overthrow of government, this was an attempted overthrow — and a lot of people were in on it.” That ignores not only the reality that the investigation began when he was still a private citizen, but also Horowitz’s finding that political bias played no role in the investigation’s origins.

Trump even lashed out at his own FBI director, Christopher Wray, after an interview with ABC in which Wray accurately described the inspector general’s core findings — that he “did not find political bias or improper motivations impacting the opening of the investigation [into the Trump campaign], or the decision to use certain investigative tools during the investigation.”

Trump responded to those comments with a tweet that fueled speculation about Wray’s job security:

McCarthy has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to push brazen lies on Trump’s behalf. For instance, after an October 3 media availability in which Trump earnestly and unambiguously called for the Chinese and Ukrainian governments to investigate Joe Biden, McCarthy went on Fox News and flatly denied the president said what he was on tape saying.

“You watch what the president said — he’s not saying China should investigate,” McCarthy claimed.

But McCarthy’s tweet about the report stands out by the sheer volume of false claims he manages to pack into a tweet under 30 words in length: Every single factual assertion in it is false. The president’s defenders are getting to a point where it’s news when they say something true, instead of the other way around.

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The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

Neil Chatterjee, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and lover of coal. | Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit

How a new FERC order will help old, polluting power plants stay alive.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to save American coal, and when he first came into office, he made several rather theatrical attempts to do so. He had the Department of Energy (DOE) instruct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to bail out coal based on its supposed resiliency benefits, and when FERC wisely rejected that idea, he threatened to use DOE emergency powers to bail out coal plants on national-security grounds. That widely mocked proposal never got off the ground either.

Since then, Trump has become distracted by other matters and doesn’t talk about coal as much. But the administration has continued to find ways to help coal, from rolling back pollution regulations to killing Congress’s attempt to extend clean energy tax credits.

Still, coal plants are still closing faster than ever — for the simple reason that energy markets are turning against coal. There are cheaper, cleaner, better alternatives. So the coal boosters have turned to the lodestone strategy to rig markets, to exclude coal’s social and environmental costs and include phantom benefits like “fuel security.”

Now the Trump administration has found a clever new way to do that. Last week, the administration secured what might be its biggest victory yet on coal’s behalf.

You see, on Thursday, FERC approved the expanded use of the minimum-offer price rule (MOPR) for a regional transmission organization called PJM.

We’ll get into exactly what that means, but the primary takeaway is this: federal regulators are now actively working to counteract the effects of state-level clean-energy policy, despite opposition from virtually everyone except the fossil fuel generators that directly stand to benefit. And by doing so they will crank up costs on 65 million consumers (as a start).

If you want the full background on what this means and how all these acronyms fit together, I wrote a long post last year explaining the whole thing top to bottom. Here I will just summarize the decision FERC just made and ponder the grim implications for future federal policy.

Ryan McKnight, via Flickr

The origin of the MOPR

Here’s how things work in deregulated electricity markets (which cover about 70 percent of Americans): power generation companies, or “gencos,” bid to sell their power into wholesale energy markets, via open auctions; distribution utilities buy power from those markets and deliver it to customers. The markets are run and monitored by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs).

The Federal Power Act (which goes all the way back to 1935 but has been amended several times since) is clear about who has jurisdiction over what parts of the electricity system. The parts that cross state lines — interstate transmission of power and multi-state wholesale power markets — are regulated by the federal government, specifically FERC. It is FERC’s job to make sure that power markets reliably provide power at rates that are “just and reasonable.”

The parts of the electricity system that operate within state borders are governed by the states themselves, through legislatures and public utility commissions (PUCs). That includes distribution utilities, the power they buy, and the distribution systems involved in retail electricity. States are responsible for “resource decision making,” i.e., deciding what resources generate their power and what rules govern the distribution utilities that carry power to customers. (This jurisdictional split is important in what follows.)

Another key bit of background: most RTOs/ISOs run not only electricity markets, where power is bought and sold, but also capacity markets. In capacity markets, gencos don’t bid to provide power, they bid to provide availability — a contract to be available at particular times. The idea is to ensure sufficient investment in capacity and to build a buffer, a “reserve margin” of extra generating capacity, in case demand unexpectedly spikes or a power plant unexpectedly shuts down. (Capacity markets are increasingly large and increasingly problematic, as this report from research consultancy Grid Strategies explains.)

Now, the final piece of the puzzle. A decade ago, worries were raised about utility holding companies, which are both sellers and buyers of capacity, selling artificially cheap capacity into markets in order to drive down prices, from which they would then benefit. To remedy this potential use of buyer-side (monopsony) power, FERC added a tool to its toolkit: the minimum-offer price rule (MOPR), which forces resources owned by the holding companies in question to meet at least a certain minimum bid price in capacity markets.

It was meant to be a surgical tool, used in clear cases of buyer-side market manipulation, almost entirely limited to natural gas plants. In 2011, FERC specifically said that renewable resources are not good examples of buyer-side attempts to suppress prices.

But recently, FERC has given the green light to a massive expansion of the MOPR’s use.

The MOPR is being used to counteract state clean-energy policy

Here’s the thing: a lot of big, old, dirty fossil fuel plants, especially coal plants in the midwest, have had the crap kicked out of them in energy markets and now rely on revenue from capacity markets to stay in operation. But just as they have been reducing energy prices, natural gas and renewables — along with demand response, which is also now permitted in wholesale markets — have been reducing capacity prices, pushing a lot of old plants into retirement.

This is a good thing for everyone except the owners of those plants. But those gencos, and the utility holding companies that own them, have lots of influence over RTOs and ISOs. And they have been complaining to market administrators that they are being beat in capacity auctions because clean energy has an unfair advantage. Both renewables and nuclear power are subsidized in various ways by state energy policies that, for instance, require utilities to procure a certain amount of their power from renewables. Those policies suppress prices, they argue, and thus subsidized renewables and nuclear ought to be subject to the MOPR.

Some RTOs and ISOs have found this argument convincing and have appealed to FERC to be allowed to apply the MOPR to clean energy resources supported by state policies. Last year, when ISO-New England made the request, FERC granted it, and endorsed the broader use of MOPRs: “Absent a showing that a different method would appropriately address particular state policies, we intend to use the MOPR to address the impacts of state policies on the wholesale capacity markets.” (Note here: FERC’s explicit intent is to “address particular state policies.”)

That brings us to PJM, administrator of wholesale markets that cover some or all of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. PJM runs the biggest power auctions in the world; its capacity auctions run around $8.5 billion a year.

Of all the RTOs/ISOs, PJM has the dirtiest power mix and has added more fossil fuel resources in recent years, mostly new gas. Between 2012 and 2022, it is on track to add 52,830 MW of non-renewable generation, almost entirely natural gas.

NRDC

In fact, as a recent series of S&P stories revealed, PJM has been artificially inflating its demand forecasts for years to justify a natural gas building binge. It currently has 29,000 MW of new natural gas planned or under development, at a cost to customers of around $25 billion. (See this Rocky Mountain Institute report on the danger of stranded natural gas assets.)

As a result, PJM has loads of old legacy plants threatened by falling capacity prices — for instance, around 18,000 MW of its old coal plants are only economic because of capacity payments.

And so PJM petitioned FERC to allow it to expand its use MOPRs as well. Last year, FERC returned PJM’s first attempt, saying that it hadn’t subjected enough resources to MOPRs. That docket has been sitting at FERC for 18 months and everyone in the energy world (except the gencos with the old plants) has been begging FERC not to set this precedent. Ten Democratic Senators recently sent FERC a letter about it.

Part of the delay is explained by the fact that FERC, which is supposed to have five commissioners (by law, no more than three from one party), was down to four for most of the last year after Commissioner Kevin McIntyre died in January. It’s been an even split — Republicans Neil Chatterjee (the new chair) and Bernard McNamee, Democrats Richard Glick and Cheryl LaFleur — when mean neither side can get a quorum.

But this summer, LaFleur retired, giving Republicans a 2-1 majority, and they wasted no time. Sure enough, the MOPR decision was 2-1, with Glick writing a blistering dissent.

The order, issued on Thursday night, is expansion of MOPRs in PJM with almost no limits — a change “of kind and not just degree,” Glick writes — using the broadest, vaguest definition of state subsidies. Like so much in the Trump Era, it’s not just bad, it is The Worst.

Expanded use of MOPRs is a terrible idea, according to almost everyone

It doesn’t take much thinking to figure out why this is a bad idea. (You can read op-eds against it here, here, and here; just about every clean energy or environmental group has weighed in.)

First, ponder the rationale. Prices are going down in capacity markets, which means consumers are saving money. Gencos say it’s a problem, though. Why? Because, they argue, by receiving distorted price signals, the capacity market could end up producing too little capacity and causing reliability problems.

Is that actually happening? Well, no. None of the RTOS/ISOs are failing to meet their reserve margins. If anything, most are overstocked with capacity. Notably, PJM itself is wildly overstocked — in 2018 it had 24,500 MW of capacity in excess of its reserve margin. That is extra generating capacity, which customers have to pay for, just sitting around.

So PJM wants to jack up capacity market prices, not because of any reliability problem, not because of any plausible forecast of a reliability problem, but because of vague fears that there might one day be a reliability problem.

The MOPR that PJM is contemplating is likely to have the effect of pricing low-carbon resources like renewables, nuclear, and energy storage out of capacity markets entirely, meaning customers will have to buy more of the expensive, dirty stuff.

Sierra Club

Grid Strategies ran a study of the impact FERC’s order is likely to have on PJM’s 65 million customers.

“We estimate the total cost of the MOPR to PJM consumers could reach $5.7 billion per year, a 60% increase in cost compared to the current capacity market,” they conclude. “The average residential customer in PJM could see their electric bill increase by over $6 per month.”

The increase in costs will vary across states depending on various factors, including how much of the area PJM serves, but notably, costs will rise in every state, not just the states with clean-energy policies and not just the states with lots of resources subject to the MOPR.

Grid Strategies

(By way of contrast, power market reforms suggested by the Wind Solar Alliance could save the same customers almost $7 billion a year.)

All of these price hikes will come in service of abstractions like “investor confidence,” “competition,” and market “integrity” that FERC neither defines nor offers any way to measure.

There are too many problems with FERC’s order to do justice in this post, even aside from the fact that it’s going to unnecessarily impose billions in new costs on 65 million people. I’ll just highlight a few.

1. It is sprawling and impracticable and will create years of lawsuits and uncertainty.

FERC’s definition of a state subsidy is so broad and vague that “much — and perhaps the vast majority — of the capacity in PJM” could end up subject to the MOPR, Glick writes in his dissent.

Coal plants that receive tax credits could be hit by the MOPR. Nuclear plants that receive zero-emission credits (as in Illinois) could be, which is why the Nuclear Energy Institute also opposes the MOPR. Any low-carbon resource located in an area subject to a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program could be hit — for instance, participants in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), like low-carbon power plants in Delaware and Maryland, could see their prices hiked. Just about anything a state or city does on energy policy affects the prices of some energy resources to at least some degree.

How exactly will PJM keep track of all these subsidies?

“To implement this scheme, PJM and the Independent Market Monitor will need to become the new subsidy police,” Glick writes, “regularly reviewing the laws and regulations of 13 different states and DC — not to mention hundreds of localities and municipalities — in search of any provision or program that could conceivably fall within the Commission’s definition of State Subsidy.”

FERC offers very little guidance on what will and won’t fall within its potentially enormous subsidy net. “It will likely be years before we have a concrete understanding of how the subsidy definition works in practice or resources know for sure whether they will be subject to mitigation,” Glick says.

In the meantime, a central regulator will be setting prices for most of the market (in the name of competition) while the new rule generates confusion and court challenges (in the name of investor confidence).

(Shutterstock)

2. It threatens existing clean energy business models.

The order has the potential to screw up a number of existing business models.

First, demand response aggregators — the service providers that coordinate dozens or hundreds of devices to shift demand, avoiding the need for new generation — often don’t know exactly what resources will be available to them three years in advance, which is the time scale of the PJM capacity market. Heretofore, they were given an allowance to participate without identifying all resources in advance, but FERC killed that allowance. As a result of that and the MOPR, demand response, one of the cheapest resources available in the region, could be driven out of PJM’s capacity market entirely.

Second, though the order exempts existing public-power projects (by customer-owned municipal utilities), it “declares the entire public power model to be an impermissible state subsidy,” Glick writes, which means all new such projects will be hit with the MOPR. That could limit the ability of public power entities to form long-term contracts, which are meant to self-serve their own load. It “fundamentally upends the public power model,” Glick writes.

Third, low-carbon power plants generate renewable energy credits (RECs). Some of those are purchased and retired by utilities to satisfy renewable energy mandates, which FERC argues amounts to a state subsidy. (Note: in its comments on the docket, the group Advanced Energy Economy argues that RECs do not actually provide renewables with any out-of-market revenue.)

But some RECs are purchased and retired by ordinary customers, through voluntary REC markets, which are definitely not a state subsidy.

FERC’s solution to this dilemma is to ignore it and simply apply the MOPR to all the power. “Thus,” the Grid Strategies report says, “PJM’s proposal is not only a broad mitigation of all state policy, but also a mitigation of voluntary transactions.”

Ask yourself why a federal regulatory body should be canceling out the expressed preferences of consumers in voluntary markets.

3. It forces customers to pay twice for capacity.

In states with clean energy policies, customers will pay, via their utilities, to purchase renewable energy capacity. Then PJM will artificially jack up the prices of that capacity and drive it out of the capacity market. So customers will have to buy that much capacity again, on the market.

The result will be customers in clean-energy states paying for capacity twice, once outside the capacity market, once inside it. FERC has acknowledged this problem but done absolutely nothing to address it, likely because the Electric Power Supply Association, a trade group dominated by fossil fuel gencos, views it as a benefit.

4. It usurps state jurisdiction with no coherent justification.

Remember, FERC’s sole jurisdiction here is to keep wholesale markets running smoothly, with just and reasonable rates. Its mandate is to encourage open, competitive markets.

As for what kinds of power are generated and how much — resource decision making — that is left to the states. So says the Federal Power Act.

When a state implements a policy meant to lower the price of a particular kind of resource (solar power, say, or existing nuclear plants), intending to encourage that resource, and then PJM raises the price of that resource in capacity markets, specifically and explicitly to “address” the effect of the state policy ... it’s difficult to see how that isn’t overstepping its jurisdiction.

“The Commission is attempting to establish a set of price signals for determining resource entry and exit that will supersede state resource decisionmaking and better reflect the Commission’s policy priorities,” Glick writes. “It is hard to imagine how the Commission could much more directly target or aim at state authority over resource decision making.”

What’s more, back in its earlier June 2018 ruling, FERC had put forward a novel use for a PJM rule called the Fixed Resource Requirement (FRR), which allows a utility to opt all its resources out of capacity markets entirely. Long story short, the proposed “resource-specific FRR” would have offered particular resources the option to drop out of capacity markets and strike bilateral contracts with utilities for capacity. It was, in Glick’s words, at least a “fig leaf to state authority.”

Now, even the resource-specific FRR is gone from the final order. Resources cannot escape capacity markets unless their entire utility pulls out, per the original FRR, which is an incredibly difficult and onerous process (though Illinois has a bill before the legislature that would do just that). In effect, FERC is trapping resources in a capacity market that will intentionally undo any state efforts to encourage clean energy.

“A theory of jurisdiction that allows the Commission to block any state effort to economically regulate the externalities associated with electricity generation,” Glick writes, “is not a reasonable interpretation of the FPA’s balance between federal and state jurisdiction.”

How do Chatterjee and McNamee defend this?

Their claim is that the MOPR does not disregard or nullify state policies. It merely mitigates the effect of state policies on wholesale markets (thus, they claim, not crossing jurisdictional lines).

But if that claim is taken at face value, their justification for PJM not acting to counteract federal subsidies, offered in the recent order, makes no sense.

After all, if state energy subsidies distort wholesale markets, surely the much more numerous and older federal subsidies do as well. As Glick says, “federal subsidies remain pervasive in PJM,” from tax credits to depletion allowances to the ability to expense various costs, and the majority of them benefit fossil fuels.

FERC’s order affirms that federal subsidies are in fact market distortions, just like state subsidies, but it says that PJM may not apply the MOPR approach to recipients of federal subsidies because “this Commission may not disregard or nullify the effects of federal legislation.”

But ... wait. If applying the MOPR disregards and nullifies federal policies, why doesn’t it disregard and nullify state policies?

Conversely, if the MOPR merely addresses the effects of state policies on wholesale markets, why can’t it merely address the effects of federal policies on wholesale markets?

There is no coherent justification for FERC intruding on state jurisdiction but not on federal jurisdiction. The reasoning, as is evident again and again in the order, is entirely reverse engineered to produce the desired outcome: tilting capacity markets in favor of existing fossil fuel incumbents.

5. It is implicit climate denialism.

Consider: if it is true that CO2 is a harmful pollutant, then the fact that companies are not being charged for emitting it means that markets are working ineffectively. They are not capturing the full social costs of the products in them.

When a cost is placed on CO2 — either explicitly, through a tax or cap-and-trade system, or implicitly, by subsidizing clean competitors — the result is a more effective market, not a “distorted” one. Externalities have been internalized. It is the companies that aren’t being charged for CO2 pollution that are distorting the market. (The Institute for Policy Integrity has a good report on “Capacity Markets and Externalities.”)

By defining anti-CO2 and pro-clean energy policies (among all the many state and federal policies that affect the cost of energy) as inherently distorting, Chatterjee and McNamee are effectively denying that CO2 is a harmful pollutant.

It is is buried behind a wall of acronyms and obscure technical disputes, but it is the same old climate denialism.

FERC’s devolution into a partisan organization is complete

FERC’s order is shocking. It is a more extreme and naked bid to help coal plants than even jaded observers expected from what has historically been a fairly reasonable, empirically grounded commission. And the commission seems likely to extend similar use of MOPRs to other RTOs/ISOs, possibly NYISO next.

The order will substantially raise prices on 65 million customers, force them to pay twice for capacity, intrude on state jurisdiction over resource planning, increase capacity spending in a region already oversaturated with capacity, and disrupt several established and emerging clean-energy business models.

To what end? “The premise of the MOPR appears to be based on an idealized vision of markets free from the influence of public policies,” since-retired FERC commissioner Norman Bay once wrote. “But such a world does not exist, and it is impossible to mitigate our way to its creation.”

The justifications the Republican majority has offered for this unprecedented imposition of FERC’s preferences on states are either facially absurd, mutually contradictory, or in violation of longstanding law and recent court precedent.

The only real through line that connects the decisions and definitions in the order is that they all serve to advantage fossil fuel incumbents relative to newer, cleaner competitors.

“We all know what is going on here,” Glick writes. “The costs imposed by today’s order and the ubiquitous preferences given to existing resources are a transparent attempt to handicap [state clean energy policies] and slow—or maybe even stop—the transition to a clean energy future.”

“It is a bailout” for fossil fuel power plants, he writes, “plain and simple.”

It is no particular surprise to find a crude coal bailout being pushed by the Trump administration. Still, at least when it comes to electricity transmission and wholesale markets, FERC has generally been seen as an empirically grounded straight shooter, an outpost of old-fashioned technocracy.

So there’s a special sort of melancholy that comes in seeing it crank out the same kind of lurching, poorly reasoned, reverse-engineered junk that is so familiar in other parts of the Trump administration.

For now, FERC has given PJM 90 days to submit a revised proposal in line with its order. After that will come various “petitions for rehearing,” which FERC is supposed to address within 30 days but, in practice, rarely does. And then, when it finally hears (and presumably rejects) those petitions, the lawsuits will begin.

This is yet another mess the next administration will have to clean up, one of dozens Trump’s people will have left littering the federal bureaucracy.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. | Xinhua/Ting Shen/Getty Images

Even as lawmakers blocked hundreds of bills, they confirmed more than 100 judges.

Even as it stymied hundreds of bills this year, the Republican-dominated Senate was laser-focused, yet again, on confirming a huge number of judges at a rapid pace.

That included three who were deemed “not qualified” for the job, by the American Bar Association (ABA), the independent professional organization which has offered presidents guidance on judicial picks for decades.

Those were far from the only federal judges the Senate approved; in 2019, lawmakers confirmed a total of 102, including 20 circuit court judges. This number builds on the 66 judges the Senate advanced last year as President Donald Trump and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seek to push the federal judiciary further to the right.

The ABA ratings have long been part of the vetting process that each judicial nominee goes through, though presidents have opted to treat them differently. Former President Barack Obama, for example, waited to receive the ratings before making his nominations official, while Trump has declined to do so.

For every person that is nominated for a judgeship, a panel from the ABA — made up of 15 law experts known as the Committee on the Federal Judiciary — ranks their qualifications based on interviews with colleagues, a review of their past writings, a personal interview and an examination of their broader body of work. The group has three ratings it grants nominees: well qualified, qualified, and not qualified, all of which are intended to capture a person’s “integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament.”

Since 1989, the group has rated just 21 announced nominees as “not qualified,” a rare classification that suggests an individual lacks the necessary professional expertise or judgment to serve on the federal bench.

In 2019, the ABA officially gave three of Trump’s judges this distinction: Ninth Circuit Court Judge Lawrence VanDyke, District Court Judge Justin Walker and District Court Judge Sarah Pitlyk. The Senate confirmed them all.

As Vox’s Ian Millhiser has written, many of Trump’s appellate nominees have strong credentials for the judgeships they’re now in, including clerkships at the Supreme Court, and they’re likely to affect policy for decades:

There’s no completely objective way to measure legal ability, but a common metric used by legal employers to identify the most gifted lawyers is whether those lawyers secured a federal clerkship, including the most prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court. Approximately 40 percent of Trump’s appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and about 80 percent clerked on a federal court of appeals. That compares to less than a quarter of Obama’s nominees who clerked on the Supreme Court, and less than half with a federal appellate clerkship.

That said, the president has also nominated far more individuals who’ve been dubbed unqualified, compared to President Barack Obama — who did not appoint a single nominee who received this rating. They too, will have a major impact, and their confirmations are indicative of how devoted Republicans are to advancing their goals of remaking the federal judiciary — no matter the fallout.

All three of the “not qualified” judges this year earned their marks for different reasons: VanDyke’s review, which followed interviews with 60 of his colleagues and former coworkers, was scathing. It noted that others saw him as “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue,” and emphasized that he would not affirm his stance on treating LGBTQ individuals fairly, something he later pushed back on at his confirmation hearing. Walker’s and Pitlyk’s, meanwhile, centered on their lack of legal experience.

In all three cases, Senate Republicans moved forward with the nominations — as they did with a slate of three “not qualified” picks last year as well. In total, the Senate has confirmed seven Trump-appointed judges who’ve been categorized as unqualified.

The advancement of these judges serves to send a message beyond their individual confirmations: It underscores the determination with which Trump and Senate Republicans have focused on transforming the courts, filling them with nominees who are younger, white, and predominantly male.

Republicans are so dedicated to these aims, it seems, that they’ll keep on backing Trump’s nominees — even if they aren’t seen as qualified for the task.

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"After opening 20 percent behind Star Wars: The Last Jedi last weekend, Skywalker has almost caught up with its predecessor as it heads for the $1 billion mark in a fitting end to Disney's unprecedented domination at the 2019 box office," writes the Hollywood Reporter. But Forbes senior contributor Paul Tassi notes that critics seem to hate it -- while it's been embraced by Star Wars fans: Rise of Skywalker now has some critics calling JJ Abrams' finale effort one of the worst in the series, oftentimes even more so than the dreaded prequels. In contrast, a good chunk of fans seem to enjoy the finale and think it's a fitting end to the series, and "fixes" much of what went wrong from with The Last Jedi... You can actually see this play out in the numbers. I went through and measured the critic score versus the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for every Star Wars film... the biggest gap in favor of fan approval, by a huge margin, is Rise of Skywalker, with fans rating it a full 31% better than the critical average... [W]hat's going on here, really? To me, the impression I'm getting is that critics have overreacted to Rise of Skywalker's flaws just like fans overreacted to the problems with The Last Jedi. Neither of these films are even close to the worst Star Wars film in the grand list. Critics are insane to say that Rise of Skywalker is worse than movies like Attack of the Clones or Phantom Menace, so much so that it almost seems spiteful to try and make that case. And the same goes for The Last Jedi haters who would rate it as the worst Star Wars move in history by a 13% margin under the worst prequel, Attack of the Clones. Just... absolutely no way. To sum up what happened, fans were mad that The Last Jedi took traditional Star Wars arcs and shattered them, ignoring questions like the mystery of Snoke and Rey's origins, and that the film turned Luke from shining hero to grumpy sacrificial lamb. And that's exactly what critics liked about the film, that it broke away from tropes and tried something new. That's why those same critics are so mad now, because JJ Abrams did everything possible to undo so much of what Johnson did in The Last Jedi, providing specific answers to those questions that Johnson said weren't important. Abrams sidelines lambasted characters like Rose, he mocks Last Jedi moments like the Holdo maneuver or Luke throwing away his lightsaber. It's such a complete rewrite of The Last Jedi it actually feels vengeful. But fans like it A) because they got those Last Jedi "fixes" they were looking for and B) it was specifically...made for fans. The film is rife with fan service, which is often viewed as a negative by critics, but you know who likes fan service? Fans. He also shares some "lessons learned" for Disney: that one person should be in charge of an entire film series, and "that maybe we don't always need a trilogy, and stories should be as long as they need to be." "Technically JJ Abrams' Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker could have just been a two-film set, given how much of The Last Jedi was flat-out erased."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times’ Upshot teamed up with the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project to determine the top priorities of independents, as the organizations recently did for Democrats and Republicans. The independent cohort accounted for 9% of the 110,000 respondents in their survey, and instead of simply giving them one list of topics to choose from, the survey gave respondents 10 different chances to select a bucket of four issues that they hoped to see come to fruition. The issues that recurred most often within those buckets were then deemed among the highest priorities of respondents. The No. 1 issue for independents was impeachment (either do/don't), as it was for Republicans (Democrats ranked it No. 2). The results show 55% of independents were in favor of impeaching Trump, but overall the group wasn't as uniformly for/against like Republicans or Democrats were. 

Independents’ No. 2 issue was also the top priority for Democratic voters: Don't separate immigrant children at the border, with 84% support among independents (similar to the 92% of Democrats who said the same).

Independents put not banning guns as their third most important issue with 80% saying they don’t want a total ban on guns. Similarly, it was Republicans' No. 2 issue with 89% opposing a total ban.

But independents were back to aligning with Democrats on their fourth top issue, not banning abortion, with 77% opposing such a ban (as did 87% of Democrats). Republicans also opposed banning abortion at 65%, though it ranked as No. 13 on their priority list.

Independents' fifth-most important issue was the border wall, with the vast majority, 64%, opposed to building the wall. Democrats were opposed by 86% while 81% of Republicans supported building the wall.

So Independents sided with Democrats on four of their top five issues, though they did so in greater numbers on not separating immigrant children and opposing a border wall and a ban on abortion than on impeachment. Overall the final five issues for independents also leaned toward Democratic positions: debt-free state college, a $15 minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, conducting universal background checks before gun purchases, and banning assault rifles. 

Check out the graph below the fold.

On the Times site, this graph is interactive. 

JK Rowling is a bigot, but at least she’s in good company.

Have a merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year everyone. I’m on vacation for the next couple of weeks. I’ll see you back here in 2020.